bookbashuk Chapter 221: Late Visit
Chapter 221: Late Visit
Sofia was standing in his doorway.
She was wearing a white fitted singlet, the fabric thin enough that it moved with her breathing, a high school style jacket over the top of it in a muted olive color, unzipped and hanging loose over her frame like she had grabbed it on the way out without thinking about it and still managed to look like she had planned the whole thing.
Black shorts underneath, short enough that they stopped well above mid thigh, her legs bare below them. Good legs. The kind that made the shorts look intentional even if they weren’t.
Her hair was falling past her shoulders, longer than it looked from a distance, a few strands across her face from the walk over that she hadn’t bothered to move.
Her brown eyes found his immediately and she smiled, the warm easy smile that had been the first thing he had noticed about her.
In both arms she was holding a bottle of alcohol pressed against her chest, a good one by the look of the label.
"Hi Liam," she said.
"Hey Sofia," he said.
He looked at her and thought the same thing he always thought. She had absolutely no business looking like that at this hour.
She held the bottle out toward him. "I’m sorry for knocking like that. I wasn’t sure you were in and this was starting to get heavy."
He took it from her.
He checked the label properly and looked back up at her. "Thanks for this."
"Carried it three blocks from here and it was starting to get heavy," she said. "I kept switching arms so I’m glad you like it."
He almost laughed. "You could have put it in a bag."
"I could have," she agreed. She looked past him into the apartment. "Can I come in?"
He stepped back from the door. "Yeah. Come in."
She came through and he closed the door behind her.
She looked around the apartment the way she always did when she came in, like she was just checking that everything was where she left it.
Then she turned back to him.
"I wasn’t sure I was going to catch you," she said. "I almost left."
"You almost did," he said. "I just got back. Wasn’t long ago."
"How long?"
He thought about it. "Twenty minutes maybe. Less."
She nodded like that meant something to her.
She looked at him for a while like she was staring into his soul.
Then she started walking slowly around him.
Her hands were locked together behind her, her steps unhurried, moving in a slow circle around him.
He turned his head to follow her and then turned his body as she completed it, both of them ending up facing each other again.
"What are you doing," he said.
"You know, I’m really into nature and conservation," she said. She tilted her head slightly. "You spend enough time outside, your nose starts picking up things other people walk past."
She took one more step closer.
Her nose moved slightly, barely perceptible, like she was confirming something.
"You smell like a woman’s perfume. Expensive one."
Liam looked at her.
He mind went to Elena immediately.
"That’s impressive," he said.
He had not expected that.
"I can explain," he started.
She shook her head. "There’s no need." She said it simply, no edge in it, no weight behind it, no performance of being unbothered.
She just actually seemed unbothered. "I’m just glad you’re here and that you don’t think I’m weird for showing up at this hour."
He looked at her for a second. .
She was looking back at him with the same easy expression she had come in wearing and it occurred to him that she really wanted to see him or he could be wrong and she was just bored.
Liam scratched the back of his head. "It’s fine. But is there a reason you came by?"
She didn’t answer.
Her eyes had moved past his shoulder toward the coffee table where the grocery bag was sitting, visibly full, the top folded over but not sealed.
She walked toward it and he followed, both of them standing in front of the coffee table looking at the bag like it had come up in conversation.
She picked it up and looked inside.
She took her time about it, looking through what was in there with the particular attention of someone who actually knew what to do with ingredients rather than someone reading a foreign document.
Then she looked at him.
"You were about to cook something?"
"Uh. Yeah." He looked at the bag. "I was. I’m not feeling it right now though."
She looked into the bag again. "What were you going to make?"
"I hadn’t decided yet."
She looked up at him with an expression that suggested she found this answer about right for him specifically.
Then she looked back at the ingredients.
She set the bag down and started pulling things out one at a time, arranging them on the coffee table, reading a label on one thing, turning another over in her hand.
"I’ll cook," she said.
"You don’t have to do that."
"I want to." She was already gathering things back into the bag, organizing rather than packing, the movements of someone who had already made a decision and was now executing it.
"I should be the one cooking for you anyway. I promised you I would last time and then it never happened."
Liam looked at her. "You remember that?"
She looked up at him. "Yes."
He did remember saying it. Some conversation where it had come up and then got lost in whatever else was happening that day.
He hadn’t expected her to remember it though.
But then again Sofia paid attention to things. He knew that about her.
She had already gathered the ingredients and was moving toward the kitchen with them, her jacket swinging as she walked, her hair moving across her back. He followed her without deciding to.
She set everything on the counter and started opening and closing cupboards with the calm efficiency of someone who didn’t need to ask where things were because they were going to find them anyway.
There was a pot under the counter.
A pan from beside it.
She checked the weight of the pot and put it on the stove and turned back to the counter and started sorting through the ingredients, putting things in the order she was going to use them.
Liam leaned against the counter beside the fridge and watched her work.
"What are you making?" he said.
"Surprise," she said, without turning around.
"Okay."
She pulled a knife from the block and tested the edge with her thumb and seemed satisfied and brought it to the chopping board and started on the first thing.
He watched her hands.
She knew how to hold a knife.
The kitchen was small enough that she filled it without crowding it, moving between the counter and the stove in a short path, adding things to the pot, adjusting the heat, going back to the board. She had a quiet focus to her when she cooked, the same quality she brought to the fieldwork she talked about sometimes, like the task in front of her had her full attention and everything else could wait.
Then she stopped and reached for the jacket zip and pulled it down and shrugged it off her shoulders in one movement, dropping it over the back of the stool beside the counter.
Liam looked.
The white singlet without the jacket was a different situation entirely. Thin fabric, fitted, the neckline low enough to show the full upper curve of her chest. And underneath it, nothing. No bra.
Her boobs sat full and round against the white material, her nipples already visible through the fabric.
Heat moved into Liam’s face before he could do anything about it.
Something else was moving too. Below the waist. Already and with conviction.
He turned his head away from her.
"Is something wrong?" she asked.
"No," he said. To the wall. "Nothing. Keep going."
’Calm down,’ he thought. ’Calm down. She’s cooking. She’s just cooking. Calm down boy.’
He exhaled slowly through his nose.
The instruction was partially received.
---
Twenty minutes of watching her cook.
It had somehow turned into something else entirely.
Liam was not watching her technique or the pot or anything that could reasonably be described as the cooking. .
He was watching her boobs move under the thin white fabric every time she reached for something or stirred something or shifted her weight from one foot to the other.
He had stopped pretending otherwise about ten minutes ago.
He didn’t even notice his dick pressing against the front of his trousers until he shifted against the counter and was abruptly reminded of the situation.
’He’s completely watching me right now,’ Sofia thought. She kept her eyes on the stove. ’I don’t know why it’s making me feel hot.’
She stirred the pot slowly and let another minute pass and then cut her eyes sideways without moving her head.
His trousers were doing very little to hide what was going on.
She looked back at the stove.
’He’s hard,’ she thought. ’Okay.’
She turned something down on the burner and thought about it.
’That changes things a little.’
She had brought the drink hoping they would open it together and maybe once she was a little loose she would find the courage to do something about the way she felt about him.
But he was already hard and she was already warm and maybe she didn’t need the drink after all.
She finished what she was doing and set the spoon down.
’I’m still too shy to just do something,’ she thought. ’But maybe I don’t have to. Maybe I just need to give him a reason to do it instead.’