Chapter 64: Second Thoughts?**
The drive from Sophia’s building had two stops in it.
The first was the pharmacy on the corner of Madison — the kind of place that stayed open past eleven and asked no questions about anything. Liam pulled in, killed the engine, and sat for a moment before going inside.
He needed the stop for more than one reason.
The practical reason was clear enough. After what had happened in that car — Sophia’s hands, the fogged windows, fifteen minutes of something that had come very close to a decision neither of them had planned to make tonight — he was wound up in a way that had a specific destination. He knew where he was going. He wanted to be prepared before he got there.
The other reason was that he needed five minutes to think without his hands on a wheel.
He went inside, found what he needed, and stood in the aisle longer than the task required.
The conscience thing had been bothering him since the drive away from Sophia’s building. Not guilt exactly — Rachel had made her interest clear, repeatedly and without ambiguity. She wasn’t being misled. She knew what this was, or at the very least she had accepted the shape of it without protest.
It was the word that bothered him.
Bootycall.
He didn’t like applying it to Rachel specifically. She was warm and genuine and made breakfast without being asked and left her door slightly open late at night. The word felt reductive in a way that his conscience kept flagging. But she had reciprocated — every time, fully, without hesitation — and that mattered. That changed it from something he was doing to something they were doing together.
He was almost settled on that when the other thing surfaced.
He stood in the pharmacy aisle and let it arrive properly.
Rachel had tried to make him finish inside her.
Not subtly, not ambiguously. With clear, sustained effort.
He ran the facts quietly. Six months divorced. No children from the marriage. Darren’s warning: "the husband wasn’t the problem." A woman who had walked away from her marriage without kids and was now pressing close in the dark and making very specific requests without using words.
Liam picked up the box and looked at it.
"Smart," he told himself. "Very smart."
He thought about what the system had told him when it first flagged her. Low-value. Minimal recommended investment. He had started with that framework and somewhere between the first dinner and the breakfast in bed it had quietly shifted. He was thinking about her conscience, her history, her emotional state. He was considering her in ways the system hadn’t suggested and wouldn’t reward.
"Am I going about this wrong?"
He stood there genuinely asking himself that.
He pulled out his phone. Opened her contact. The photo he had gotten from her with the top of her cleavage exposed and pressed together.
The frankly unreasonable chest made its usual argument.
Liam looked at it for a long moment.
"Fuck no," he muttered with a grin.
He went to the register.
The drive to her building was quiet. He took it steady, not rushing, letting the logic run one final time before he arrived and stopped thinking about it.
The breeding theory — he was being clinical about it, deliberately, because clinical was the only way to look at it without it becoming something else. A woman in her early thirties, recently divorced, marriage she had apparently been responsible for ending, no children despite presumably being of an age and situation where children had been possible. If she had left a marriage and come out of it without what she’d gone in for, then the drive might still be there.
He wasn’t concluding anything. He didn’t have enough to conclude anything.
What he had was a pharmacy bag on the passenger seat and the reasonable decision to ensure that whatever happened tonight remained firmly in the category of his choice rather than circumstance.
He thought about Darren’s face when he’d laid out the warning. Not dramatic about it. Just a man passing on information he thought was relevant and leaving the decision where it belonged.
The decision was Liam’s.
He’d made it.
He pulled up outside the building, pocketed the pharmacy bag, and checked his phone. Rachel’s response was already there — a photo, dim lighting, the top of her cleavage pressed together into something that made the preceding five minutes of careful rational thinking feel slightly beside the point.
Below it, a single line.
Don’t keep me waiting.
Liam locked the car and headed for the entrance.
The thing about Rachel, he thought on the way up, was that whatever her history looked like — whatever the real story was behind the marriage, whatever she was or wasn’t hoping for — she had never been anything but honest with him, at least in regards to things that were actually his business. No pretence. No performance. Just a woman who knew what she wanted and stopped pretending otherwise.
He respected that, even when it required him to be careful about it.
He knocked twice.
The lock clicked almost immediately.
The door opened and Rachel stood in the dim warmth of the lamp behind her, and whatever remained of the evening’s careful analysis dissolved quietly somewhere at the back of his mind where responsible thoughts go when they’ve done their job. Because who could think rationally with a body like this in front of her.
He stepped inside.
Liam stepped through the doorway and froze. Rachel stood in the soft glow of a single lamp, wearing sheer black lace lingerie that clung to every curve like it had been poured over her skin. The bra lifted her breasts into deep cleavage, the thin fabric barely covering her nipples. The matching thong sat low on her hips, the front panel so delicate it left almost nothing to the imagination. Her long legs were wrapped in matching thigh-high stockings with delicate garter straps. Liam did a visible double take, his eyes widening as they traveled from her face down to her toes and back up again.
Candles flickered on every surface—shelves, the coffee table, the windowsill—casting warm, dancing light across the room. Scattered rose petals covered the floor in a soft path leading toward the bedroom. Liam blinked, genuinely surprised by how much care she had put into the setup.
"What is all this?" he asked, voice low.
Rachel smiled, slow and confident. "I wanted to try something a little different tonight."
Liam walked farther inside, noticing the rose petals under his shoes. He smiled despite himself. It was actually sweet.
"Don’t get any wrong ideas," Rachel said quickly, stepping closer. "This isn’t me trying to force anything or slap a label on us. I just... wanted tonight to feel special."
Liam met her eyes. "I am getting some ideas, and I like all of them."
Rachel’s expression softened. She turned and walked to the dining table, then climbed onto it with deliberate grace. She sat on the edge, leaned back on her hands, and spread her legs wide. The thong stretched tight over her pussy, the lace already damp.
"This..." she said, voice husky, "... is what you’re having for dinner."
Liam moved between her open thighs. He hooked his fingers under the thin straps of the thong and slid it down her legs, letting it drop to the floor. Her bare pussy glistened in the candlelight, lips already swollen and slick. He leaned in and pressed a slow, open-mouthed kiss to her inner thigh, then another, working his way closer.
Rachel’s breath hitched. "Mmm... Liam..."
He licked a long, flat stripe up her slit, tasting her arousal. Rachel moaned softly, her hips shifting forward. Liam circled her clit with the tip of his tongue, then sucked gently, drawing another shaky sound from her.
"Oh god... right there," she whispered.
He slid two fingers into her wet heat, curling them while his tongue kept working her clit in steady, firm strokes. Rachel’s thighs trembled around his head.
"Fuck... your tongue feels so good," she gasped. "Don’t stop... please don’t stop."
Liam pumped his fingers slowly, matching the rhythm of his mouth. He sucked harder on her clit, then flicked it rapidly with his tongue. Rachel’s back arched, her hands gripping the edge of the table.
"Ahh... Liam... I’m getting close already," she moaned, voice breaking. "Keep going... just like that..."
He added a third finger, stretching her, and pressed his tongue flat against her clit while moving his head in slow circles. Rachel’s moans grew louder, more desperate.
"Yes... oh fuck yes... your fingers... deeper... mmm..."
Her pussy clenched around his fingers as her orgasm built. Liam kept the pressure steady, sucking and licking without rushing. Rachel’s legs shook harder.
"I’m gonna come... Liam... I’m coming... ahhh!"
Her climax hit hard. She cried out, hips bucking against his mouth as her walls pulsed around his fingers. Liam kept licking her through it, drawing out every wave until she finally slumped back, breathing heavily.
He stood up slowly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Rachel looked at him through half-lidded eyes, chest rising and falling.
"That was..." she started, but Liam leaned in and kissed her deeply, letting her taste herself on his tongue.
Rachel reached for his belt, fingers already working the buckle when her phone lit up on the table beside them. The screen showed an incoming call from an unknown number. She glanced at it, then back at Liam, a flicker of uncertainty crossing her face as the phone kept ringing.