She could feel him watching her but every time her eyes flicked to catch his, he’d be looking down at the tattered day-worn Metro in his hand. Even from ten metres away, the paper looked scuffed and dirty, and it’d been folded in half since the man had first picked it up.

They’d both boarded the train at Liverpool Street with the late-commute crowd. 18:27. Two strangers in a crowd of dozens more. A wet night. The air outside had been fresh and damp, an earlier thunderstorm having faded into a typical London drizzle.

Winter. Glowing yellow-white streetlights. Car headlights and pattering rain. Smoke misting from exhausts. The kind of scene that’d look cosy in pictures or on Christmas cards. But it didn’t feel cosy when you were running along the dirty streets, car horns in your ears and rain chasing you down the stairs into the hollow commotion of the underground station.

Ella sighed, still content to have caught the train, and leaned against the metal pole beside her. She tucked a loose strand of damp hair behind her ear and glanced at the man again. Still reading the Metro, apparently. The train had already made four stops, handfuls of commuters trudging from the carriage off into the night. And this man apparently hadn’t read more than half the sports page.

Ella wondered. She shrugged in her head and turned her attention back to her phone. And two seconds later he was looking at her again. She knew it without even checking.

Listen to this erotic story and be drawn in to Ella's mind as she imagines what might be . . . and learn if it becomes a reality in Hannah Blackbird's first published short story. Short but with every word making this story vital, alive, and real. Hear it alone in bed or with your favourite person.