One train service ran all night at the weekends, transporting to and from the city a motley crew of passengers comprising sweaty revellers and bleary eyed shift workers. Steve, one of the latter, was in good spirits after finishing his shift, and, once on board, he had successfully avoided the attentions of the angry drunks, whose stops had come and gone. The train was out in the pitch-dark boondocks now, the concentrated lights of the city well behind it, and only a few passengers remained.
One of Steve's fellow passengers was an interesting sight, indeed: she had clearly come from a club, her cheeks flushed and skin shiny with sweat. Her left leg (exposed bare all the way up to the thigh by a very short skirt) jiggled restlessly up and down as if she could still hear the beats. She sat on an aisle seat at the opposite side of the carriage from Steve, one row up and facing in his direction, and Steve found that he could steal glances at her reflection in the windows. When they passed through a tunnel the reflection was even clearer, and it was during one of these tunnel passes that she caught him looking.
Steve glanced away, and noticed in his peripheral vision that her leg had stopped bouncing. Then it resumed. Using the ruse of wanting to look out the other windows, Steve tried to get a better look at her. He found her looking directly at him, grinning, working on a piece of gum.
What happened next was so quick it was almost a blur: she stood up and took two long strides towards him, performed a one-eighty which pointed her ass in his face (her skirt swirled upwards and Steve's heart stopped at the glimpse of tanned, pert buttocks and a black thong), and parked herself on the seat next to him, her arms pressed against his. She brought her legs up and rested her heels on the seat in front. She looked at him as if to say, How d'ya like that?
Steve laughed self-consciously, his insides doing flips. "Hi," he said lamely.
She smelled of perfume, sweat and gum. She had shoulder-length, straight blonde hair, which she flicked behind her. Steve could see down her top, a flimsy, gold, low-cut number. She was braless. Her breasts were huge for someone so petite. She really was gorgeous; Steve wondered if she was a professional dancer. He also wondered if she had meant her skirt to fly up like that; from the way she was scrutinising him now, her big eyes looking up at him, he felt pretty sure she had. God, what have I lucked on here? Steve thought. Nothing like this had ever happened to him outside a dream.
The train rumbled through the dark countryside. Feeling compelled to break the silence, Steve said, "Just come from a club?"
She took out her chewing gum and stretched across Steve to stick it on the window. As her body leaned against him (her cleavage was in front of his face at one point), Steve stiffened down below, and his heart pounded. She sat back down and giggled. Is she high? Steve wondered.
"Just come from work?" she asked, ignoring his question. Steve nodded.
"Lisa," she said.
Steve looked at her. "Oh," he said. "Steve."
"Can I show you something?" she said, and stood up. She glanced up and down the carriage and turned her back to him. She lifted up the back of her gold top. There was a flowery tattoo on the small of her back, partly covered by her skirt. "You see it?"
"Mm," Steve managed to say, suddenly finding speech difficult. God, it was hot on this train.
She tugged down on the skirt and revealed the whole tattoo, which stopped at the top of her ass. She was looking round at him now, grinning again.
"I just got it this week," she said, fixing her skirt and sitting down again.
"It looks great," Steve said, and she beamed at him.
"Have you got any tattoos?" she asked.
"Me? No, I'm too boring for that," he said.
"What?" she said, putting her hand on his arm. She looked serious. "I'll bet you're not."
"Oh yeah, I am," he said, smiling.
"I don't like sitting next to boring men."
"Actually, thinking about it, I'm pretty exciting," he said quickly, and she laughed.
"I mean, if you were boring," she said, taking his hand and putting it on her thigh, "Then you'd take your hand away from me."
Steve looked across at her, then down at his hand on her thigh. He left it where it was, but he looked up nervously for any sign of the conductor. He could only see the heads of two passengers far up the carriage.
"And you wouldn't rub my leg."
He stroked her thigh, tanned and smooth.
"All the way up to the top," she said.
He went to the inside of her thigh, feeling her muscles shift in anticipation; he put his hand under her skirt and felt the silky fabric of her thong.