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I tilted my head to the side and gave him a mischievous smirk. “How do you know half of them haven’t already seen it?”
“Fuck,” he groaned as he looked away, that muscle tick-tick-ticking away. Something feral flashed in those honey depths, making me feel trapped in them as they hardened, fossilizing me in amber. “Have they?”
“I don’t think I should divulge such personal information to a man whose name is still a mystery to me.”
“Zak,” he gritted out. “Zakhar Morozov.”
“Nice to meet you, Zak,” I murmured, keeping my voice soft and slightly husky to tease his cock into flexing against me again. The way his hand slid down to my ass, cupping one hip and then squeezing—as if it belonged to him—should not have been nearly as sexy as it was to me. Yet I found myself squeezing my thighs together in an attempt to alleviate the heartbeat that was suddenly thumping in my clit. “I’m Sofia.”
“Morozov.”
Growing up, I’d learned something quickly when it came to my father. The way a person—particularly a man—reacted to Adrian Volkov saying their name spoke volumes to me. If they flinched, I knew they were weak. If they had to visibly steel their spine, I knew they were scared but wanted to give the impression they actually had a set of working balls.
But if they showed no reaction, not even a flicker of their lashes or a subtle shift in their breathing, I knew that person was serious trouble. Those people were usually even more powerful than my father, and that made me nervous. Few people were in the same category as the Volkovs, and those who were typically happened to be family.
Zak didn’t move a muscle at the sound of my dad’s slightly accented voice speaking his name. His hand remained on my ass, his thumb even stroking over my crack in a way that heated me all over again after the icy shower my parent’s voice had caused. My breath escaped me in a soft gasp as Zak gave my ass a final squeeze before lifting his hand respectfully higher.
Turning, one hand still at the small of my back, he held out the other to my father. “Volkov, good to see you.”
I locked my jaw to keep my mouth from falling open as the two men shook hands without so much as sizing each other up. Dad didn’t even seem to care that Zak—a complete stranger to me—was standing so close and touching me.
“I see you finally met my Sofia,” Dad said as he gave me a loving smile.
“How do you two know each other?” I asked, narrowing my eyes on the older of the two men. I didn’t know if I should be suspicious or concerned, but the two of them being so friendly felt incredibly weird to me.
Maybe because Zak was the first guy I’d ever been attracted to that my dad actually liked…
“Zak is a friend of a friend from Saint Petersburg. In fact, he was gracious enough to donate the Ural emerald necklace for tonight’s charity.” He tipped his head toward the display over my shoulder, a knowing glint in his eyes. “When your mother worried about where you had wandered off to, I figured I would find you here. Shall I bid on it for you, sweetheart?”
That he was offering meant I hadn’t broken any promises to myself to ask for it. But for some reason, a lump filled my throat, and I found myself shaking my head. “No. Thank you, Daddy. But I think I’ll pass on the Ural.”
Surprise flickered through his eyes but quickly disappeared. “If you see anything you want, just make a bid,myshka. I’ll cover anything you want.”
I gave him a tight smile and stepped away from Zak. His golden gaze was warm on the side of my face, but I didn’t give him a second glance as I stepped away from him. Why I was suddenly so upset with him left me clueless, but I felt hurt all the way to my soul for some crazy reason.
All because he’d donated the Ural necklace? I’d felt like it had belonged to me the moment I set eyes on it, and his donating it to charity—a very deserving cause, at that—felt like a betrayal.
Ugh, maybe Raven hadn’t gotten all of my childishness out of me over the summer after all.
