“The train is approaching. Please step back from the platform.”

Lianna hears the announcement as she hurries towards the stairs leading down to the subway platform. 

“Shit,” she breathes and quick-steps her way through the almost empty station. She shuffles her feet as she negotiates the corner to go down the stairs, but her wet shoes slip on the grime-slicked floors anyway, and she grabs the handrail just in time, barely avoiding tumbling to the ground. Still, one nylon-covered knee licks the filthy floor which she tries not to think about.

“Fuck,” she curses again, berating herself through gritted teeth. After that momentary pause, she pulls herself up and resumes her brisk descent.

Just as she makes it to the bottom, she hears the chime and the announcement: “The doors are now closing. Please stand back.”

Shoes skittering on the wet floor once more --damn soleless flats; damn rain-- she rushes the doors, striding through them just as they slide shut. Suddenly, she lurches backwards as if grabbed from behind. She gasps and looks back wide-eyed. Her backpack is caught in between the doors.

No time to even swear aloud, she immediately pitches herself forward, looking every bit like a dog straining at the leash. Her bag pops out --the doors clamping shut behind her sternly-- and she stumbles forward, slumping hard against a vertical handrail to brace herself.   

With the train slowly pulling out of the station, she closes her eyes, shakes her head wearily and breathes with exasperation, “Fuck me.”

The sounds of snickering rouse her eyes open. She looks around quickly. The train is nearly empty, but there is a teen couple seated a few feet away, giving her the side-eye and mumbling something to each other through derisive grins, something unsympathetic undoubtedly.

She grimaces as she turns away. Feeling the blush fill her slightly mortified face, her mind’s eye sees what they see: an unkempt, exhausted office labourer, soaked to the bone. Her tangled curls of brunette hair, her face, her bag, her coat and her shoes are all drenched by the evening’s heavy downpour she had clearly not been expecting or prepared for.   

“All good?” 

Lianna blinks, then her eyes roll down to an older man wearing a Yankees baseball cap and jacket seated in the chair in front of her.  

“What?” she asks, irked.

He leers at her, sporting the same slanted grin as the teens. “You all good?”

Something about him tells her that he isn’t necessarily that concerned about her current well-being. Probably the way his eyes linger on her wet, black stockings a little too obviously.

Already turning and moving away, she grumbles, “Yeah.”

She finds a seat toward the end of the subway car and plunks herself down. Sliding to the inside seat, shoulder against the wall with her back to the other passengers, she drops her bag on the other seat beside her and readjusts her earphones. It’s the best she can do to barricade herself from the rest of the world at this point.

She grimaces trying not to think if the seat feels and smells uncomfortably moist and musty because of her or because of its numerous, previous occupants. In the end, it doesn’t really matter. Finally, she’s going home.  

Checking her phone, she notes the time, “10:30 p.m.”, then sighs and turns the volume up on her jazz music before putting it away. She looks aside at the vague nothingness passing by the window as the train passes through the tunnel and adds to a seemingly endless supply of weary sighs.

What a fucking day.

What a fucking evening.

Crushed by deadlines at work, she knew before the start of the day that she would have to stay after normal hours, but not this late. Truthfully, she should have left along with the rest of her colleagues much earlier. She could have, but she didn’t.

Because he had asked her to.  Anson, her manager, had asked her to.  

As the subway trundles along through the darkness, Lianna props an elbow on the window sill and massages her finger and thumb above her eyebrows, thinking. In the window’s reflection, she sees herself looking back with a knowing, accusatory smirk on her pink lips as she faces the truth: Anson had asked only because she had suggested and offered. And if he hadn’t asked, she would have insisted.

She had already been preparing to leave for home when she noticed him still working at his desk. The office was empty save for the two of them at that point in the early evening. A realization dawned on her, radiant and heart-stopping: He would be working late and he would be alone.

The train sways, its chattering and squealing wheels working to hypnotically disengage people from their present, lulling passengers into deeper strata of contemplation and reflection, where fantasy and desire find seed. This is where Lianna’s thoughts dwell now, her eyes closing, but not for sleep. No, her mind is alert and indulgent.  Even now, the same excitement she felt when she saw him alone, and realizing the opportunity of being alone with him in that office in the evening, is a heady elixir, stimulating a giddy pulse in her heart that she feels right through to her fingertips, both tingly and warm. 

Further down, beneath her coat and skirt, her warm thighs flex slowly, unconsciously rubbing together with provocative friction between her nylons.

Lianna’s hand drops from her brow to her mouth, tracing her pinky along her pouting lower lip. Her other hand moves as well, fingers curling open and closed on her leg at first before exchanging that motion for a deeper, more gratifying rub of her palm against her upper thigh, easing inward between her lap with each stroke. 

She grins and shakes her head at herself. She knows that her infatuation with her colleague had definitely ended up slowing the work down, delaying her return home even longer. Unable to help herself, she succumbs to his distraction, then and now.  

With her eyes closed, she sees him clearly, smiling at her, speaking to her with his placating, deep, compelling voice, touching her arm and shoulders. As she slides her hand between the part in her coat and presses her fingers just below the waistline of her skirt, she breathes deeply, inhaling the traces of his musk she had captured in her nostrils with every opportunity she seized to stay near him, to invade his space.

Lianna shifts in her seat and her brow pinches sourly as restlessness and discomfort seethe within her. She feels the restrictiveness of her damp clothing, the hardness of the dirty seat beneath her, the cramped confines of her space. This won’t do at all. It doesn’t matter that she’s in the subway still several stations before her stop. She finds seclusion in the heavy bass and rhythms of the seductive jazz music filling her ears and surrenders to the lusty desire she feels for Anson filling her mind.

With easier passage from above than below, she tugs the front of her blouse from her skirt. Skimming her fingers along the smooth skin of her lower belly for a moment, she flattens them and wedges them beneath the lip of her skirt’s waistline, clawing their way downward centimetre-by-centimetre till she touches the edge of her bud.

Her other hand returns over her eyes, providing a hood from the intrusive lights of the subway car that seep through her eyelids. In this makeshift solitude, a provocative scene of indecency and impropriety plays out in her head as her fingers busy themselves below. She can feel her ass backing against the edge of a desk, with her heels spread on the office floor as Anson moves between her legs, standing tall and determined. 

As she senses his hands scoping around her waist, up her chest, pushing up her breasts, she drags her ring-finger up and down along an ever dampening line of tenderness along her crotch. 

Her shoes slide forward on the train’s slippery floor as she slumps deeper into the stiff seat. The pressure of her fingers steadily climbs, rubbing her lips till her underwear and pantyhose are smeared with her moisture. Her fingers curl, struggling against the resistance of her underclothes.

“Fuck,” she breathes as she withdraws her hand for a second before shoving it back under, slipping it beneath her panties this time.

With thoughts of Anson raising her skirt and sucking and licking at her pussy, she teases the hood of her pulsing clit with her fingertips as if it were his hot, slick tongue. Practically feeling the enticing scratch of his evening stubble around his mouth and cheeks against her sensitive flesh, her fingers rev faster, swirling around in tight little circles.

Still, this isn’t enough. She wants more of him, more of herself. Licking her lips and sweeping back her hair, she curves a finger inward, pushing through her wet lips, and sinking it inside of her as if it was his stiff cock. Gnawing at her bottom lip as she slides her glossy finger in and out, she aches out his name in her head, “Anson… oh, fuck.”

Lights flash behind her closed eyes like flares of electricity.  Lianna is long lost to the time and place, unaware of the stations the subway stops at and passes, or the passengers boarding or departing. All she gives a fuck about is throwing fuel on the fire of her rampant lust, indulging in the most carnal encounter she can rummage from her deepest desires: Anson fucking her, using her in every way upon his desk. She wrenches down on the collar of her blouse as the finger on her other hand shunts in and out with fervour, feeling her tingling clit pulse and stiffen as she reaches her edge.

The train’s wheels squeal painfully as the subway rounds a curve just as Lianna’s bottom lip pops from the clamp of her teeth. A rushing, rattling gasp bursts from her mouth as she shakes in her seat. A slick of wetness spills over her fingers, soaking her lips, streaking down her thighs and crotch, pooling around her crack. Breathing hard, she gasps and gulps, an unnerving feeling of disorientation swirling around in her electrified, frenzied head.

Then she hears chuckling, chortling.

Eyes rounding open, she suddenly remembers where she is just as the subway slows into a station.  

“Oh, God.”  

She grabs her bag and, clutching her coat closed with her damp, sore hand, she stands and rushes for the door. She tries not to look at the ragged old man in the Yankees hat and jacket, tries not to think that he’s the one who’s snickering with those leering eyes of his.

Once on the platform, she stops and exhales a prolonged, draining breath. Only as the subway’s doors close and the train pulls away into the tunnel does she realize that she got off one stop early.

“Shit.”

What a fucking night.

Deciding she could use the walk anyway, she trudges up the stairs, her knees weak, her undergarments uncomfortably damp. She feels dirty and not just from the rain and subway.

Emerging from the station, the streets are empty, the roads and sidewalks slick and shiny from the earlier rain. 

Walking alone, she’s absorbed in her thoughts once more. There was a point back at the office when she had come close, so fucking close to realizing those desires with Anson tonight…

Then he looked her in the eyes, patted her on the arm, thanked her for staying late… and then called his wife to say he was coming home.

Bastard.

She shakes her head. No, she’s the fool.

As she drags her feet along the empty sidewalk, her phone chimes. She reads the text: “Hope you got home safe. Thanks for your hard work this evening.”

Lianna shifts her lips, the taste of cold comfort sour in her mouth.

Another text: “Would you be able to stay late again with me tomorrow night?”

She frowns and types back: “I thought the work was completed?”

After a moment, the reply follows: “It is.”

As Lianna blinks at her screen, a large drop of water splatters upon it, then another.  She looks up and feels the warm rain splash against her face, her hair, her body.  A storm erupts around her. She should take shelter and wait for it to pass, but instead walks down the dark sidewalk towards home.

She’s already wet, anyway.