Reeve Street was quieter than File Street and better at lying about it.
The building sat back from the curb like it had money in a previous life. Fresh lockbox. Clean stoop. Windows that had been washed for the listing photos and not since. Ethan got there at 1:52 because Sophia Bennett had already told him what late looked like on her time.
She was on the steps with her phone and a key code, coat open, looking at the street as if it had personally disappointed her.
"You’re early," she said. "That is either manners or you did not trust me not to start without you. Come in before this block decides we are having a meeting on the sidewalk."
"I didn’t want the lockbox to be the first thing you had to deal with."
Sophia gave him a look that almost counted as approval and punched the code. The foyer smelled like paint trying to cover something older. Wanted Scent took the closed air and made it warmer than the house had earned.
[New Function Unlocked: Asset Convert]
[10 CP = $1]
[Daily cap: $300]
[Hint: She will buy this building. Ask for a close fee before she talks herself out of wanting you in the room.]
Ethan read it while Sophia checked the ground-floor lights. Twelve hundred was already in his account. The System wanted him to take a second bite.
"This one is not Holt," he said. "The bones are clean. The flip is honest enough that you will not be paying for someone else’s photos. If you take it, I want a close fee. Not another week of walking with a clipboard. A number on the deal."
Sophia turned from the switch. For a second she looked like she might laugh. She did not.
"You refuse Veronica’s check in the morning and try to bill me in the afternoon. That is either growth or you have decided I am the easier woman to ask."
"You are the one buying a building. I am the one who told you Holt was a bad idea before you spent the money. If Reeve is good, I want to be paid like I helped you see that."
Sophia walked past him toward the stairs, close enough that Low Heat wanted out and he still held it. "Two percent of what I save off asking if your notes are the reason the price moves. That is the sentence. If the price does not move, you get the week we already agreed on and you do not sulk about it."
"That is fair."
"It is work. Fair is a word people use when they want me to feel generous." She started up. "Second floor first. If the bedrooms are lying, I want it said before I start liking the light."
The second floor was the reason she would buy it. High ceilings. A hall that did not pinch. Two empty rooms with dust in the corners and a bathroom that had actually been finished by someone who owned a level.
Sophia stood in the larger bedroom with her arms folded, looking at the street through glass that did not rattle.
"This is the one," she said. "I can feel myself getting stupid about it, which means I need you to tell me why I shouldn’t."
"You should. The street is quieter than File after ten. The wall insulation is not lazy. If you lose money here, it will not be because the house lied. It will be because you paid asking."
Sophia glanced at him sideways. "You got better at that. The first week you sounded like you were trying not to get fired. Now you sound like you already spent the fee."
"I told you I came to work."
"You told me that on a porch with an inspector twenty feet away." She let her arms drop. "There is no inspector now. There is a room and a boy Veronica Cole asked me not to make a problem, and I am still standing here."
Wanted Scent sat between them. The new face did the rest. Sophia looked at his mouth the way she had on File Street, then at the empty bed-wall, then back at him like the loop itself was the problem.
"If I ask you what you did to my hand in that lobby, you are going to give me an answer I cannot put in an email," she said. "So I am going to do something dumber than asking."
She kissed him.
It was not careful. It was a thirty-nine-year-old woman deciding the trial had already gone sideways and she might as well choose the angle. Her mouth opened on his like she was angry at how easy it was. Ethan put his hand at her waist and Wicked Fingers II traveled from the silk of her blouse inward, low, exact.
Sophia made a sound into his mouth that she would have killed in a lobby.
She broke the kiss and stayed close enough that the words had nowhere decent to go.
"That is the third time. I told you I would ask a question Veronica should not hear. The question is whether you understand that if we do this in an empty building I am buying, I am going to hate you for a week and still expect the notes on time."
"I can live with you hating me for a week."
"Of course you can. You are nineteen and you just got paid." Her forehead touched his for a second, then she laughed once, raw. "Lock the bedroom door. The street does not need a story and neither does my office."
He locked it.
Sophia pulled her blouse out of her skirt herself, then stopped his hands when they went straight for the zipper.
"Slow enough that I can still pretend this was a bad idea," she said. "Not so slow that I remember I have a flight on Thursday."
He kissed her throat. Wicked Fingers II found the clasp of her bra and the heat under it at the same time. The skill ran from her spine toward her chest and she swore under her breath, quiet and startled, as if her own body had taken a side.
"That. That is the thing you do. Do not stand there and look innocent about it."
"I wasn’t going to."
He got her blouse off. The bra followed. Sophia Bennett in an empty bedroom was not the coat-and-clipboard version. Soft where the clothes had been strict. Nipples already tight from the skill and the cold of an unheated second floor. She watched him look and did not cover herself.
"If you get shy now I am putting the blouse back on."
Ethan put his mouth on her breast and his hand under her skirt in the same motion. She grabbed the back of his head hard enough to hurt. Echo Touch hit when he lifted his mouth, and her knees gave a little against his thigh.
"God. All right. All right. The wall. I am not getting on a floor that has not been cleaned for a listing."
He walked her back until her shoulders met plaster. Her skirt bunched at her hips. He dragged her underwear down just far enough and found her with two fingers, already wet, already chasing the contact like Friday had been sitting in her all weekend.
Sophia’s head tipped against the wall. "Do not narrate. Do not ask me if I am sure. I walked into an empty building with you. That is the answer."
He worked her until her breathing went uneven and her nails bit through his shirt. When she came the first time it was against his hand, a broken sound she tried to swallow and could not, thighs shaking around his wrist. Echo Touch dragged a second pulse out of her after he went still, and she laughed into his neck like she wanted to slap him for it.
[She’s still open.]
[Iron Stamina I — Active]
[Do not rush the ask later.]
"Clothes off," she said. "If I am going to be stupid, I am not going to be the only one half dressed."
They got the rest of it off in a hurry that still had her mouth on his. When he lifted her, she wrapped her legs around him without being asked. The first push in made her gasp against his cheek, tight and hot and specific, the kind of fit that ended the part of the afternoon that was still pretending to be a walkthrough.
"Stay. Let me—" She breathed through the stretch. "Okay. Move. If you freeze because I made a face I am going to be insulted."
He moved.
The wall took the rhythm. Sophia met him like a woman who had already decided the regret could wait until the car. Wicked Fingers II held her ass and sent the sensation higher every time he seated himself all the way. Low Heat finally came off the leash in the closed room and made the air thick. She cursed into his mouth and came again with her forehead on his, clenching around him so hard he had to use Stamina to stay in it.
[Hold.]
[She can take the second.]
He did not talk.
He fucked her through it until the anger in her voice turned into a sound that had nothing to do with work. When he let the hold go he came in her with his mouth on her shoulder and her heels locked at his back, the empty house around them doing nothing to make it decent.
They stayed there until her legs remembered the floor.
Sophia put her feet down, pushed him back a step, and looked at the mess of her skirt like it had betrayed her on purpose.
"That did not make you my anything," she said, still catching her breath. "It made this building more expensive in a way I cannot write off. Hand me my blouse before I remember I have a call at four."
Ethan found it. He did not make a joke. She would have walked out on a joke.
Sophia dressed with her back half to him and her hands not quite steady. When she turned around she was the coat again, almost.
"The close fee still stands," she said. "Two percent if the price moves. The week still stands. If you put this in a note, or in your face when you see Veronica, I will end more than a trial."
"I wasn’t going to put it in a note."
"See that you don’t." She paused with her hand on the door. "I am buying Reeve. I am not buying a boy. If you come to the next walk thinking this is how the work starts now, you will find out I can be colder than Friday."
She unlocked the bedroom and went down the stairs first.
Ethan stood in the empty room long enough to let the System finish.
[Climax Confirmed: Sophia Bennett]
[Named MILF Conquest]
[Reward: 2,200 CP]
[Hidden: She started it]
[+400 CP]
[Close Fee Path: Open]
[Asset Convert: Available]
[Current CP: 7,950]
He converted three thousand points before he left the foyer, because the function was there and because he wanted money that had not come from her body or Veronica’s book.
[Asset Convert: 3,000 CP → $300]
[Daily cap reached]
[CP Remaining: 4,950]
[Cash on hand: $1,500]
Outside, Sophia was already at her car. She did not look wrecked. She looked like a woman who had decided the afternoon would stay in the building.
"Notes tonight," she said across the roof. "Honest ones. If you write like a man who just got laid in my future property, I will know."
"I’ll write about the light and the asking price."
Sophia held his eyes one second longer than work required.
"Good. Then go home and let Veronica keep the version of today she can live with."
She drove off.
Ethan walked back toward campus with her on his mouth and fifteen hundred dollars that did not belong to the Cole house.
The System had finally paid him in both.
He was not going to tell Veronica about either one.