CHAPTER ONE: THE STORM BEFORE THE CALM

 

Monica looked quite stunning in the silver-coloured satin dress. It was sleeveless and had a neckline that dropped to display enough cleavage to get a man interested, but not so much as to provoke a riot in the foyer of the Concert Hall. As we walked back to the car afterwards, the material shimmered under the streetlights. The hem stopped just above her knee, and she wore slim silver sandals with an elegant heel and straps that wound halfway up her calf. Over her shoulder swung the silver-sequinned handbag that completed the ensemble. Her jet black shoulder length hair made a striking contrast with the whiteness of her skin and the glint of the thin silver choker at her throat.

She had almost shown me up, coming dressed like that. I had almost felt obliged to wear a tie. Almost. But then women - and Monica in particular - are like that. They like to push you just into the discomfort zone. Which was not to say that I didn't get a buzz out of having her on my arm amidst the hoity-toity of Brisbane, sipping their champagne during the interval. Monica wanted to go outside for some fresh air, but I was more than happy to display her statuesque beauty to the envious eyes around me, and I knew she was not averse to such limelight. The sight was made more stirring by the fact that Monica wore little beneath the dress, and the coolness of the air-conditioning had made her nipples harden and strain at the taut fabric.

The concert had been a stunner, ending with the mighty Saint-Saens third symphony with the organ in thundering counterpart to the rest of the orchestra, sending shivers down my spine. Briefly, I had even forgotten the other stunner sitting alongside me. Now, walking back to the car, we were full of enthusiasm for the performance and the lasting echoes of the music that lingered in our heads.

I use the word 'car' loosely. Monica normally drove a BMW, and like any Beemer driver she was somewhat pernickety as to where she parked her pride and joy, and in this instance, Monica did not deem it appropriate to leave such a vehicle in a side street near the Concert Hall. Which was why I was driving Monica home, in all her elegance, in the Transit Van. 

Not that there was anything wrong with the Transit Van - it was a very functional vehicle, as I knew only too well through having transported a number of women - in various states of restraint - around Brisbane and its environs. Most of the time I had been scared witless of being pulled over by the cops for a minor infringement, only for them to find, for example, a bound and gagged passenger strapped to one of the benches in the back. Then there had been Monica's devious retribution on the whole team, when I found myself chauffeuring the girls all over the place on a bizarre treasure hunt, with each solved clue eliciting the release of one of the girls from the rear. That had been a long day, made more so by my own predicament, but the less said about that the better. Now, predictably, I could hardly look at the van without resurrecting the memories that it evoked.

Parking was not always readily available near the Concert Hall, which was the reason we had parked two blocks away in the unused car park belonging to Green's hardware store. It was a spot I had used on a regular basis, but one in which I would not have parked the Beemer - not without expecting to find a key scratch or two down the side. I had just unlocked the van passenger door for Monica when the three shadowy forms materialised from the darkness.

They wore black ski masks - one large man and two smaller, slimmer ones. From the moment one of them seized Monica and put what looked like a pistol to her throat, I knew I was powerless to do anything. Aside from a startled exclamation or two, almost nothing was said in the initial encounter. I remember it because it seemed to happen so slowly. There was a startled gasp from Monica as an arm locked about her throat. I turned from the door to see two more of the attackers looming over me. I saw Monica's bag fall to the ground and a voice hissed at me:

"No noise, or she's dead!'

I froze, and my body turned cold at the sight of Monica trapped in the grip of her assailant. The car keys were snatched from my grasp by one man while the other prodded me in the ribs with another weapon. It was pointless to ask what they wanted. They had a purpose about them that suggested they knew exactly who we were, and they had something very specific in mind for us. Urged by the prodding gun, I walked slowly to the back of the van, following the first man, with the second behind me, all the while listening to Monica struggling for air in the grip of the third. 

Our feet crunched loudly on the gravel in the still night air. There was nobody else about - we were too far from the Concert Hall, hence the parking availability. All in all, it looked like not having been a very good idea. 

One of the slimmer men opened the rear doors. 

"Get in!" he gestured. "On your face!"

I climbed inside, very slowly, making no abrupt movements. Guns gave me the willies, and there was no way I was going to do anything stupid under those circumstances. As I lay on my belly on the floor of the van, one of the men climbed on top of me and pulled my hands behind me, tying my wrists together, crossed, with a length of cord. Moments later Monica was on the floor beside me, her breasts and face pushed into the carpet, receiving the same treatment.

We lay there each with a man on our back while the third - a large, bulky man - opened the steel ammunition box fixed to the floor against the dividing wall between the front and rear sections. In here we kept a range of passenger restraint devices - ropes, straps, tape, you name it. It was the tape that the guy had in his hand when he turned around - a big roll of silver duct tape.

 Monica was the first to be on the receiving end of this as the guy straddling her back wound several turns around the fingers of each hand, effectively immobilising them. Nobody spoke as this happened - the only sound was the heavy breathing of all participants in the drama. The man then sat Monica up and tore off several long strips of tape which he placed over Monica's eyes and mouth before ordering her to cross her legs in a sitting position. She did so, with the satin dress riding up her thighs, and was rewarded with having her crossed ankles bound with another short cord. 

Then it was my turn, and I received the same treatment. I wondered where this was all going. It did not seem like a robbery. If it was a kidnapping, what was the point? Was it Monica they were after specifically, and if so, why? Was this a ransom thing? My mind was racing but I could not think of anything constructive to do, or that we could have done up to that point. The moment people started pointing guns I discovered I had a marked inclination to do as I was told. 

My ankles were tied at this point, sitting cross legged, my fingers, mouth and eyes all taped over, and I could not help the feeling that these people were somehow in 'the business'. They knew exactly what they wanted to do and did it with minimal fuss or need for communication.

Strong hands manoeuvred Monica and me so that we were sitting back to back. So that was why they had taped our fingers, I thought. These guys were thinking ahead, and had done this before. Tape now seemed to be the order of the day - quick, easy and if done correctly, very permanent. I felt the grip of the stuff as it went around my right upper arm, under the short sleeve of my shirt, then apparently wrapped around Monica's left upper arm, pulling our limbs together. The same thing happened to our other arms, and we found ourselves joined very effectively, but the lads were on a roll and such restraint obviously wasn't sufficient for them. Or was there some other agenda, I wondered, as further tape went over my mouth then began to wrap around my head and Monica's, melding us in a head-to-head position, the tape tightening over our already sealed mouths and eyes until we could barely move our heads except to wobble from side to side.

It was astonishing how immobile my head had become, and with this, the rest of my body. There was an exclamation from Monica and I felt her body jerk.

"Mmmmmp!"

"Nice tits," said one of the men. I found out later that he had at this point slipped the thin straps of Monica's dress off her shoulders to reveal what was all but visible through the thin material already. Monica was protesting as best she could under the tape. 

"What else is in the box?" said a voice. 

There was the sound of rummaging in the tin box and several grunts of satisfaction. Moments later there was a moan of pain from Monica, and you did not have to be Einstein to realise something metallic with painful jaws had been released on to each nipple. What I did not expect was for my own shirt to be opened up and then for my own nips to be on the receiving end as well. 

Oddly, I could have sworn the person affixing the biting clips had long fingernails. Was one of the slimmer men actually a woman, under the bulky sweater and ski mask? There was some tugging on the clips, drawing muffled yelps of pain from me. I felt a continued tension placed on them and later discovered that our clips had been joined by two bungy straps, pulled over the top of the horizontal rail which ran from the cabin wall to the vertical post just inside the rear door. It was a very effective means of subduing our movements.

The final touch was when the tail of my ankle rope was pulled underneath me and - I assumed - under Monica, to be tied to her ankles, pulling our legs tighter into our respective crotches.

At this point two of our attackers climbed out of the rear, closing the doors behind them, before getting in the front and starting up the engine. That was the start of our long night in the van, bound, gagged and blindfolded, unable to make the slightest movement without that movement transferring to the jaws fastened on the tender flesh of our nipples.

We drove for perhaps half an hour, before turning into a driveway somewhere. It had been a painful and confusing ride and I had lost track of the direction. I thought maybe we had crossed the Storey Bridge to the south side of the city at one point, judging from the rapid clump of expansion joints under the wheels for a short while, but then I lost the plot again - if I had indeed ever had it. 

We paused briefly shortly before the engine was turned off and I was sure I heard the sound of a roller door opening and then closing behind us. From the echoes, I formed the impression we were in a large warehouse or industrial shed of some sort. After we came to a halt there was the sound of the van front doors opening and closing, but whoever remained in the back with us did not immediately exit. Instead, there was the sound of more rummaging in the box. I groaned inwardly. 

There followed some whisperings from behind me, and some indignant grunts of protest from Monica, going up an octave in anger before Number Three opened the rear door and climbed out, then slammed it and left us alone in the van. What I did not know at this stage was that he - I assumed it was a 'he' - had evidently succumbed to the sight of Monica's crotch peeping out from under the satin dress, sporting only a G-string. Ignoring her muffled objections he had inserted a vibrator into her pussy and trapped it there with a piece of tape wrapped around the G-string.

Monica now began to squirm - inasmuch as she was able, which was in fact very little. Our heads were melded together with the tape, as were our arms, and our legs were securely pulled in and tied in place. Only our bodies could sway - at the cost of hurtful tuggings on our nipples - but after perhaps ten minutes this began to be irrelevant to Monica, as she tried to grind her hips into the floor. At one point she managed to get her taped hand under the rope connecting our ankles, obviously trying to pull it into her crotch for more leverage. All it did was pull the rope into our butt cracks and induce more pain in our nips. 

I protested as much as I could, voicing my objections sternly through the tape wrapped around my head, but Monica was away, now, emitting little shudders and trying to push herself up and down on the floor with her bound hands. This was not very successful, and I could now hear her breathing becoming faster and merging into ragged sighing grunts from behind the tape. The grunting began to get more rapid until I knew the climax was on the way. Monica strained at the tape around our arms and heads, her moans abruptly becoming louder and more furious as the climax rushed on to her. I felt her body stiffen and jerk as a loud "Urrn! Urrn! Urrn!" came through her nose, before falling away to a whisper, overlaid with hoarse panting.

How many of these were we going to have to cope with, I wondered? Was I glad it was her and not me? I don't know. It wasn't really something I could comment on authoritatively. But she did seem to be getting a bonus that I was missing out on.

Monica was on her way to a second orgasm when the front door opened and the engine started again. This time nobody joined us in the back, and we were off on another ride that was maybe half an hour again. It must have been around midnight by now, I guessed. Where were we going?

We finally stopped on the side of the road somewhere, I figured, judging from the crunch of gravel and the slight lean of the van. The engine stopped and there was the sound of the front door opening and closing, then another car pulling up. A further door opened and closed, this time more distant, presumably the other car, before it drove away and we were left, somewhere on a lonely country road.