INSTRUMENTAL SANCTUARY — 2.2

Two AM was turning out time. By then, the crowd had thinned. The lights came on, and the music stopped. Herded along with the masses towards the cloakroom and exit, my night out was drawing to a close.

The cool nighttime air was refreshing when it hit my face but chilled my back enough to prompt me to put on my jacket. I contemplated calling a taxi, but upon checking how much money I had left on me, it turned out that my options were to take the late bus with all the crazies or walk back to my flat. Having decided on the latter, I started my jaunt home. I stepped off the curb to cross a side street, only to be startled to a stop. Bright white lights that captured me in their beams. I froze. Brakes screeched—the car ground to a halt. I was saved. Squinting into the glare of the headlights, I put up my hand in surrender—a gesture of gratitude for not mowing me down. Mortifyingly embarrassed, I hurried off the road and back onto the pavement, hoping that would be the end of it. I'd had enough drama for one night. If being abandoned by my girlfriends, narrowly escaping having my drink spiked or becoming roadkill had not bruised my resolve, then realising that I was probably going home to another sleepless night did. I hadn't been alone in my head for ten minutes, and I could already feel my niggling anxiety creeping up from the murky depths of my brain to haunt me. Lost in thoughts of self-pity, I was stunned back into reality by a honking car horn. Fuckin' hell, what now? My grey eyes glared at the black saloon pulled to the curb beside me. The window was already down, so I ducked to peer through the void the glass left and found the driver leaning over the passenger seat to look at me.

"Do you want a lift somewhere?" The hot, blond bartender invited me into his car… as if the night had gotten any weirder. "Before you take me for a total creep, look behind you—" he flicked his eyes toward the culprits and finished, "you're being followed."

Cautious of words, I glanced back towards the Omen, and sure enough, I spotted Mr Drink spiker and his seedy wingman loitering a few yards behind me. So that my anxiety didn't rear its ugly head, before I could fully compute it, I'd opted to get into a total stranger's car and reached for the door handle. The moment the door clunked closed behind me, and I found myself immersed in the passenger seat, I made the conscious decision that I wasn't going to look at him. Instead, I stared ahead at the dashboard and tightly wrapped my jacket around myself. Despite my height, I huddled down and buried my hands deeper into the front pockets, trying to look as unassuming as possible. My decision not to look at him quickly went out of the window when I felt his eyes on me. Glancing his way as he pulled away from the curb into a slow stream of traffic, I saw him still smirking.

"So, where am I taking you?"

"I'm not telling you where I live," I blurted.

"Alright. Is there somewhere I can drop you off near yours then?" he reasoned as he pulled up to a red light. "Unless... You want to come to mine?" Trying his chances, he shot me another look: a raised eyebrow and a charming, lopsided half-smile. It was disarming, but I could tell he was trying to weigh me up.

"What?" I couldn't help the expression of shock that widened my eyes and left my lips agape. "A-are you making a pass at me?" I asked but instantly regretted it, assuming that, of course, the answer would be no.

"Yeah," he said calmly and pulled off from the traffic lights as soon as the signal changed. He was still waiting for the green light from me.

We drove silently for a few minutes, apart from the car radio playing at a low volume. I deliberated over my options. I considered telling him, 'thanks but no thanks', and asking him to drop me off at the corner shop near my block of flats. However, as I watched him grasp the joystick to shift gears, I realised I had already concluded that he had safe-looking hands. The slight flinching of his long, nimble fingers made his tendons dance beneath his skin, accentuated by his slightly raised veins. It left me with the impression that he was a strong, capable, handsome man. I wondered if he was good with his hands, gnawing at the inside of my lip.

Regardless of how painful it was for me to admit, I had been starved of any male touch since my ex left me. To be frank, the last few months of our relationship had lacked passion and physicality. It was no wonder he had decided to call it a day. Those few long and lonely months had fostered an almost shameful desperation within me. With that in mind, I shouldn't have been surprised that when I saw the stranger retract his hand from the gearstick to rest it on his thigh, my imagination ran wild—picturing all the places he could touch me, in all the places I longed to be.

The darkness of the car concealed my blushes. I reached out from my jacket pocket to rub over the back of my neck; it suddenly felt hot. "Okay." I heard myself mutter before I could stop the word from tumbling out of my mouth. It was as if my body had answered for me and left my mind to stumble through, making excuses to my conscience. One-night stands were not usually my thing. There always seemed to be something deplorable about casual hookups, so I never sought them out. Perhaps it was because my parents were happily married and had always preached that one was safest in the confines of a loving and committed relationship. One-night stands were dangerous—for the daredevils of the world—it seemed they weren't meant for the likes of me, who tended to look away from life's uglier truths like a coward. I was indifferent to being situated in the neatly labelled box society had put me in, but nonetheless, I was what people called a good girl. Although that by no means defined me entirely, because I wasn't faint of heart, I certainly wasn't one to push my boundaries either.

With my answer in his ear, the stranger shot me another lopsided smirk that taunted my inner goddess. The yearning sensation that caused my inner thighs to twitch was unmistakable. My heart began to pound as the weight of what I had agreed to dawned on me. There was no way he was inviting me to his place to play Scrabble and drink tea; that much was certain. He had admitted he was hitting on me. He was brazen yet simultaneously gentlemanly. That kind of confidence somehow made him more attractive.

The moment I accepted his advance, he turned down a side street to make a U-turn before merging back onto the main road. We headed back towards the Omen, although we didn't quite make it all the way before he took a left turn. We arrived at a small multi-storey car park. I took a good look around, relieved that he hadn't driven me to some abandoned building on an industrial estate—the sort of desolate location you hear about in the news after a dead body is found. It wasn't too far from the Omen, so I felt slightly comforted that I knew the neighbourhood. It was a nicer area than where I lived. Looking up at the signage by the entrance, I admired the façade of the upmarket block of flats. They had been renovated from the skeleton of a nineteenth-century building that had once functioned as a printing house.

He lowered his window and entered the passcode for the security barrier before we drove beneath the basement floor's cover. Spinning the steering wheel with the heel of his palm, he swiftly reversed into an available parking space and switched off the engine.

The tension and my nerves were mounting. Silently, we both got out of the car. That was when I became aware of his height. He had to be at least six feet tall. I remember thinking it was refreshing to feel feminised by a man's stature for once. My body language wasn't nearly as confident as his as I followed him. Perhaps I looked as if I were being led to my demise.

He quietly led me up two flights of winding steps and let us in through a code-locked door. By then, I had already made sure to take in my surroundings and commit an escape route to memory in case things went awry. The corridor we stepped onto spoke to the modern design of the apartments, and when we arrived at his place, the decor of his home's entryway confirmed my thoughts.

It was dark but not pitch black. I could see a tall wall of glass across the lounge that made one vast window—an eye to the city's urbanscape beyond. The maze of yellow and orange streetlights stretched towards the horizon for miles. I'd never seen the city from this high up or at night. The landscape of urban beauty distracted me from my situation. 

Breathtaking.