She wasn't doing anything wrong, Sophia told herself, wiping her flushed and sweaty palms on her jeans while she waited for the door to open. She'd done her best to find out what was happening the easy way--she had directly asked Brianna if there was anything going on between her and their neighbor, and Brianna had told her no. Even if she'd seemed a little distracted while she said it, even if the mere mention of Zachary Dreyer always seemed to make Sophia's friend's eyes unfocus a little bit in vague, absent-minded contentment, she'd given a very clear answer. It was just an answer Sophia didn't believe.
The door opened, revealing a white man in his early thirties with long chestnut hair pulled back in a ponytail, a perpetual five o'clock shadow, and warm hazel eyes that lit up in welcome at the sight of Sophia standing outside his apartment door. "Well, hello, neighbor!" he said, giving the petite blonde a wide smile and an enthusiastic wave. "If you're looking for Bree, I haven't seen her since this morning, but I know she said she'd be stopping by on the way back from work. So if you just want to hang out, I'm sure she'll be--"
"I wasn't looking for Bree," Sophia interrupted, her expression solemn. "I was looking for you... and to be honest, I was hoping to talk to you when she wasn't around." She looked at him expectantly, even as his air of warm welcome faded into guarded concern. "May I come in?" she asked at last, when he didn't say anything for a long, awkward moment. "I don't think this is a conversation we want to be having in the hallway."
He blinked heavily, his face frozen in bemusement, then stepped aside. "Yeah, um, sure, sure, come on in," he mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck nervously. "Look, uh, if this is something about Bree and me, I just want to let you know that we're just friends, okay? She's really sweet, and all, and sure, she comes over a lot to watch anime with me and maybe smoke a little weed, but I wouldn't do anything to, um, y'know, uh--"
Sophia sighed, a steam-whistle blast of exasperation that cut into Zachary's rambling excuses more effectively than any shout. "Your bed is right on the other side of the wall from me, dumbass," she snapped, unable to control her irritation at his mock-stammering innocent act. "I can hear you, I can hear Bree, and believe me when I tell you that after six years of rooming with her, I know exactly what it sounds like when she has sex. Can we just skip the bullshit and be honest here?"
Zachary gave her a wary look. "She's a grown woman," he said, sounding a touch defensive. "She's finished college, even. Maybe there's a little bit of an age difference, yeah, but she's old enough to be making her own decisions without her friends jumping in and making a--a big thing out of it." Sophia had half-expected him to make a fight out of it as soon as she confronted him with the truth, but thankfully he didn't seem more than a little bit huffy about the whole thing, at least not yet.
Then again, she wasn't done talking. "You're hypnotizing her, though, aren't you?" she asked, although the tone in Sophia's voice made it clear it wasn't actually a question. "I hear you talking to her sometimes, I know it's not just normal dirty talk. You've been hypnotizing her into doing, um, stuff. In the bedroom." A prickle of heat against her porcelain cheeks told her she hadn't been as successful at sounding calm and collected about that as she had over everything else so far.
Perhaps Zachary sensed a bit of an opportunity, because he straightened up a little and let his voice drop into a slightly lower register, suddenly radiating a confident charisma that made what could have sounded like yet more defensiveness into something more like reassurance. "If that's what you want to call it," he said, fixing Sophia with a smoldering stare that she had to admit suited the older man very well. "Personally, I think I'm just very skilled at the art of gentle persuasion. I'm describing things I think Bree would enjoy, using very evocative language that allows her to imagine what it might be like to give in to that experience, and she's come to trust my very reasonable suggestions. There's nothing wrong with any of that, is there?"
"I hope not," Sophia replied, hooking her thumbs into the straps of her sleeveless dress and sliding it off to drift into a puddle on the living room floor. She wasn't wearing anything underneath it, and her bare, smooth-shaven pussy glistened with the musk of her arousal in the gentle glow of the floor lamp's indirect lighting.
