The Kidnapping

"What do you think of this blouse? Fancy enough?" Claire swivelled in front of her mirror, inspecting her outfit from all angles. The blouse in question was an attractive shade of deep purple with frills that started at the shoulders and went down the low V-neckline. She paired it with a knee-length black skirt.

"Hmm," Benjamin furrowed his brow. "Don't you think it's a little...revealing? They might be distracted."

Claire swatted his shoulder playfully.

"I wore this same blouse when we went out with Julie and Mason and you didn't say a word! Is this just because they're..." She trailed off awkwardly. She was still having a hard time saying the word "lesbians." Her best friend since childhood, Adelaide, had only come out to her a few months ago. It was a shock, since they both came from very Christian households, but Claire was trying her best to take it in stride. To that effect, she had invited Adelaide and her girlfriend on a double date. She was regretting picking Tranquil Waters as the restaurant, though; she only had a few outfits that could pass as formal.

Benjamin leaned in to straighten his tie in the mirror.

"I wonder if they'll dress like me. Or one of them will, at least."

"Ben," Claire sighed. "That's a stereotype." She had been reading some articles online, mainly about what not to do or say. She didn't want to offend Adelaide and risk ruining her longest-standing friendship.

"Mhmm," Benjamin said noncommittally, running his fingers through his dark hair. He was particular about his hairstyle. "Ready to go?" He asked once he was satisfied with his appearance.

"I think so," Claire said. "Let me just grab my purse."

She stepped into the dining room where she'd left her purse, slung over the back of a chair. She could hear the TV still going in the next room.

"Whoops," she mumbled, taking a quick detour to turn it off. Before she did, she caught a bit of a news broadcast: the latest in a slew of kidnappings, all of them couples, the two partners disappearing simultaneously.

"Gotta be careful out there," Benjamin said darkly. Claire jumped. She hadn't heard him follow her into the living room.

"We'll be in a group, so we should be fine. People don't mess with groups, right?" She asked as she located the remote and switched the television off.

"Yeah, we'll be fine." Benjamin put his arm around Claire's shoulders and led them out of the house.

The two couples found each other in front of Tranquil Waters. Adelaide was wearing a tight aqua blue dress that shimmered under the streetlamps. Her girlfriend was wearing a black vest and tie over a blue dress shirt that perfectly matched Adelaide's dress.

"Told you," Benjamin muttered. Claire ignored him and stepped forward to hug her best friend.

"Addy, it's been so long! How have you been?"

"I've been good," Adelaide responded, squeezing Claire and then pulling back from the hug. She reached out to the woman in the suit and took her hand. "I'd like you to meet Kendra. Kendra, this is Claire, my best friend."

"I've heard so much about you," Kendra said with a friendly smile, holding out her free hand. Claire smiled back and shook it, and then gestured for Benjamin to do the same.

"This is my husband, Benjamin." Claire introduced him. "He's a bit of a slob but I managed to get him cleaned up for tonight."

Benjamin rolled his eyes.

"She says that like I don't wear suits every day at work. I'm an attorney," he added by way of explanation.

"Yeah, but then you come home and it's stained Packers shirts and boxers," Claire joked. Benjamin adjusted his tie again, pretending to be uncomfortable.

"You don't have to tell them everything you know," he protested.

They settled in at the table Benjamin had reserved for them a week earlier. It was a secluded little booth, the kind Claire had seen couples choose on purpose so they could make out with a modicum of privacy. She blushed a little at the thought, but no one else seemed to notice. Kendra and Benjamin, sitting across from each other, were busy discussing the Packers.

"So Addy," Claire began. "How's the writing going?"

That was another secret that had come out recently. Claire had known for years that Adelaide wrote novels under a pen name, and made enough at it to quit her day job as a secretary, but Claire had never been allowed to know the titles of the books or even the pen name they were published under. All Adelaide would say was that she was too embarrassed to share them because they were "trashy romance novels." After she came out, she admitted that they weren't trashy, but were in fact highbrow literary lesbian novels, which was not a thing Claire knew existed. When Adelaide finally felt comfortable enough to share her pen name, Claire immediately went out and purchased her newest book. It wasn't at all what she expected. She thought she would find the book difficult to relate to, but she was so blown away by the lyrical prose and captivating characters that questions of orientation simply did not matter. It was a beautiful story, and once she reached the end she immediately called Adelaide to tell her that, even though she'd finished the book near midnight.

Since then, she had done her best to keep up with her best friend's career, feeling as though she was making up for lost time.

"It's going pretty well," Adelaide took a sip of her wine. "Dealing with publishers can be difficult though. I want it perfect, and they want it on time."

Claire laughed.

"Have you ever thought about self-publishing?"

"Mmm. That's how I started, before I got picked up. The thing is, you reach more people with traditional publishing." She tapped her fingers on the table, her face contemplative. "It's a constant balancing act between commerce and art. I want my books to reach a wide audience, and I want to put food on the table, but I don't want to sacrifice my vision for those things, you know?"

Having reached a lull in her conversation about football, Kendra put her arm around Adelaide's shoulders.

"Is she waxing philosophical about art again? I swear she's missing her calling as a professor, she could go on for hours."

Adelaide laughed, a little embarrassed.

"I suppose that's true."

"Hey, you wouldn't be a writer if you didn't have a lot of thoughts to share with the world," Claire said. "And they're impressive thoughts. I'm working on The Living Crown right now and it's certainly a, uh, a call to arms, so to speak."

Adelaide smiled ruefully.

"Yeah, that's one of my more edgy ones. I wrote that one over a couple of weeks in a fit of anger, after my aunt turned out to be one of the most homophobic people I've ever met."

Adelaide's coming out hadn't been all sunshine and daisies, to say the least. Claire did her best to stay positive and supportive, keeping her worries to herself, to make up for the not-so-great reactions her friend had gotten from some of her family members.

Kendra was watching Adelaide's face with concern in her eyes. She wrapped her arm around her girlfriend's and leaned against her.

An attentive partner, Claire noticed. She seemed to want to reassure Adelaide with her closeness now that a potentially upsetting topic had come up. Claire's previously neutral opinion of Kendra began to veer into the positive.

A waiter came and took their orders. After he left, Claire smiled and whispered conspiratorially, "I have some good news."

Adelaide and Kendra leaned in, excited by the whispering. Benjamin didn't lean in, knowing what she was going to say, but his smile matched Claire's.

"We're going to try for a baby," Claire did her best not to get loud out of sheer happiness. This was something she'd dreamed of for so long, and now she had the perfect husband to start her perfect family with.

"Awww!" Adelaide and Kendra squealed simultaneously. Adelaide reached out and squeezed Claire's hand.

"That's so exciting! Let me know if you need any help with picking out names, I've had lots of experience." She winked, and then lifted her glass. "A toast, to new family members!"

"To new family members," everyone repeated, before finishing off their glasses.

"Man, that was a good meal," Benjamin sighed, patting his full stomach as they left the restaurant.

"That steak was perfect," Claire agreed. She looked around for a moment, slight confusion on her face. "Uh, Ben, do you remember where we parked?"

"Oh, of course, up this way a bit." He took her hand and led her further up the sidewalk.

"We parked the same way," Kendra said as she and Adelaide followed.

Claire felt a sharp pinch at her neck, as if a bug had bitten her. She heard her husband make a noise of pain.

"Ow! What was--" but she didn't get a chance to finish her sentence. Everything went dark. She was out before she hit the concrete.

Claire woke up feeling like she'd been hit by a truck. The feeling faded quickly as she came to. That tipped her off that she'd been drugged, and with something specialized at that, for it to wear off so fast.

"Claire!" Her husband hugged her. "Are you okay?" He held her at arm's length and looked her over.

"Yeah, I'm okay. Where are we?"

She looked around the room. They were surrounded by bare gray walls on each side. There was a metal door to her left, which she knew would be locked. To her right was a single cot, with a pillow and blanket thrown on it haphazardly.

Sitting across from her were Adelaide and Kendra, looking disheveled and confused. There was a rip in Adelaide's dress.

"We were drugged and brought here, that much is obvious," Adelaide said. "But why?"

"That's an easy question," came a voice marred by static. It sounded like it was coming through a badly made PA system. "We want to have some fun."

Ice ran through Claire's veins. She didn't want to know what their definition of "fun" was, but it didn't look like the choice was in her hands. She looked up and saw there was in fact a small speaker in one corner of the room, and a camera with a blinking light in another corner.

"If you do what we ask," the voice continued, "you'll leave unharmed. We promise. If you don't, we'll just leave you in there until you're feeling a bit more cooperative."

They'll starve us if we don't play their little game, Claire realized. She reached out and squeezed her husband's hand.

"All right," she said, trying to sound brave despite the shakiness of her voice. "What do you want us to do?"

"We want to see the lesbians kiss," the voice responded.

"Oh God," Addy groaned. "We've been kidnapped by perverts."

Kendra appeared to be doing calculations in her head.

"Well..." she began. "It's not like we haven't kissed in front of people before."

"Yeah, at a party. Drunk," Adelaide added morosely. She looked up at Claire and Benjamin. "I'm sorry, guys. This is...a bit more than we bargained for, huh?" The unspoken truth in her question: Claire and Benjamin were just getting used to the whole "Addy's a lesbian" thing, how were they going to handle seeing more explicit proof of that?

"It's okay, Addy," Claire said, trying to sound comforting. "We just wanna get out of here."

Adelaide nodded and turned toward Kendra.

"You okay with this?"

"Yeah," Kendra shrugged. "I mean, it's just a kiss, right?"

"For now," Adelaide muttered, casting a suspicious look at the camera watching them. She leaned in, placing her hands on her girlfriend's shoulders. Their lips met, and Claire looked away politely. Benjamin didn't. She poked him.

"What? Oh," he realized what he was doing, and stared down at his lap instead.

"There now," Adelaide said, pulling back. "Can we go?"

"Not just yet," the voice said, almost gleefully. "We're gonna need a little more than that."

"Oh boy," Kendra commented.

"What more?" Adelaide demanded.

"We want to see you two make out."

Adelaide stared up at the ceiling for a minute in despair. Then she reached down the left side of her dress, and ripped it up to her thigh. She did the same on the other side.

"What are you doing?" Kendra asked.

"If we're going to do this, we're going to do it my way. I want to sit in your lap, and this dress is too tight for me to do that otherwise."

"Oh," Kendra breathed. Claire could see her pupils going wide. She wondered if they'd done this before. They hadn't been dating for very long.

Adelaide stood up and straddled Kendra, sinking slowly down onto her lap.

"This okay?" She asked.

"Yeah," Kendra replied quietly, her hands rising to the middle of Adelaide's back. They leaned in for another kiss, a deeper one this time. Claire thought she heard a little moan, but she wasn't sure who it came from. This time she didn't look away. She meant to, really she did, but she found herself transfixed as Adelaide started to grind her hips against Kendra. Kendra's hands sank down to her ass, and this time Claire was sure the moan came from Adelaide. She gripped her girlfriend's shirt and kissed her harder.

Claire looked over at Benjamin, and at the tent in his pants he wasn't doing very well at hiding.

"I can't help it," he protested, shamefaced. "They're..." He didn't have to finish his sentence. Claire felt it too, and she didn't consider herself to be attracted to women. Okay, maybe there was that one time in college, but this was different. It felt electric. Claire found herself wanting something she hadn't wanted before. She wanted to see more of this.

The voice over the intercom returned.

"Get on the bed, the two of you. Kendra, we want you to finger Adelaide."

Claire heard a strangled noise from her husband. For the moment, she was more concerned with how these people knew their names. Belatedly, she realized that her purse was gone. Oh. Whoever it was had taken their wallets and looked at their IDs. Claire shuddered.

Kendra and Adelaide had settled themselves onto the bed without much protest.

"In for a penny, in for a pound," Adelaide sighed as her girlfriend hiked her ripped skirt up. She was wearing pretty blue lace underwear that matched her dress, and she gasped when Kendra reached under the waistband. They went back to kissing as Kendra's fingers began to move rhythmically.

Benjamin tapped on his wife's shoulder. She turned and saw him more excited than ever.

"Claire," he mumbled. "Please..."

"I know what you want," she whispered. "I want it too." She kissed him passionately while fumbling with the zipper on his pants. She couldn't believe she was doing this. The energy the two women on the bed were giving off was just irresistible. After she had her husband free of his pants, she stood and slid her panties off so she could mount him.

"Should we allow this?" The man at the computer screen said skeptically as he watched Claire start to ride Benjamin. "We were commissioned for a lesbian tape. Should I tell them to stop?"

"No, just let it play out, Tim. Grabbing those four together was a bit of a gamble, I'll admit. But we can sell this one to another buyer and try again." His boss stood behind him with his arms crossed. He seemed completely unaffected by what was happening on the screen in front of him. Unlike me, Tim thought wryly, glad he was sitting down with the desk covering his lap.

They both turned at the same time, hearing the door behind them unlatch.

"What the fuck?" Tim said. That door was supposed to be locked. He didn't get the chance to say anything else, though, before two bullets shot straight through his skull. His boss was put down in a similar manner.

The woman with the gun pushed Tim's chair out of the way, not seeming to notice as his dead body slumped off the desk and onto the floor. She pressed a couple of keys, stopping the computer's recording and then deleting it. Next she checked for older video files. There were six. She deleted them too.

Stepping away from the computer, she holstered the gun and headed down the hall.

Back inside the room, Claire started to thrust faster as she heard Adelaide's moans getting louder. It felt so good to have her husband's cock inside her, she could almost banish those thoughts that had come up, the ones of joining the two lovely women on the bed. But she had a feeling those thoughts would return, maybe on quiet evenings spent alone in the bath...

Benjamin groaned and pulled her hair, a little harder than he normally did. A few seconds later, she felt him cum inside her and tipped her head back in ecstasy as she was filled. The women on the bed sounded like they were in a similar condition, Adelaide begging for more until she finally hit her peak and went from begging to quiet panting.

The four of them were still for a minute, unsure what to do now that this line had been crossed. Claire rested her head on Benjamin's shoulder, partially to catch her breath and partially to hide her blushing face as she came to her senses. It was ridiculous, what they'd just done. But there was no going back.

In the silence they heard the lock on the door click.

"Are they...letting us out?" Adelaide asked, clearly reluctant to be the first to speak.

"I think so," Benjamin said brusquely, not looking at anyone as he stood and fumbled his pants back into place. He tried the door. It opened without resistance. The three women got up and followed him.

The door opened up onto a hallway. To the left, it stretched almost as far as they could see, before ending in an intersection. To the right was a short walk that ended in a door.

"Easy choice," Benjamin muttered, finding this second door also unlocked and leading outside. "Anyone got their cell phones? We should call the police."

"And tell them what exactly?" Adelaide asked, her voice high.

"Adelaide has a point. I think we should just...go home and never speak of this again? How does that sound?" Claire suggested.

No one said anything, but they all nodded, Benjamin the last to agree.

They walked for a little ways in silence before hitting the road. Claire stepped out and called them a taxi.

"We'll get the next one," Adelaide said, holding Kendra tightly against her.

"All right," Claire said. "Uh, good night?"

"Night," they both responded half-heartedly, blushing and avoiding eye contact.

The four went home, and, as promised, never spoke of that night again.