As soon as he took ahold of her elbow it was OK.

Near midnight. An empty suburban street in front of a silent house. Adele remembered the place vaguely from the other night, but she wasn’t working now. There was no earthly reason for her to be there. And nothing in her memory to tell her how in the world she was. The question where the hell is my car even ticked in her head, she felt a panic about to overtake her and then out of nowhere the guy appears.

His palm was damp and his touch gave her a clammy feeling all over, but she didn’t shake him off. All of a sudden it just didn’t matter. It was like being shot full of valium. There’d been this ugly thing clutching at her a moment ago, and now it was gone. Not even gone: the fear seemed like a mirage. Already she wasn’t entirely sure she’d felt it.

Adele checked herself. He was clearly some kind of creep. She wasn't fooling herself about him. Objectively, her situation didn’t look all that good. But the knowledge had no energy in it. However he was doing it, it worked, she was pacified. End of story. And obviously he’d be able to make her do stuff. Why go to the trouble otherwise? But she couldn’t see the point kicking up a fuss. Before long it’d be morning. She had a real clear feeling that morning would come, the spell or whatever would be broken, and she’d be able to leave. That’s what you focus on, not the few dark hours in store. Keep your head, stay positive, don’t make it weird.

She’d been staring down at the ground, away from him. Some rote feeling of self-preservation that said don’t look into his eyes. But now that just seemed like melodrama. And Adele looked and of course they were normal, a normal dude’s normal brown eyes. Like they’d have been anything else. He shrugged at her as if he knew what was going on in her head.

“I just have a knack for getting people to go along with me,” he said.

Adele wondered if he was going to be this smug about it the whole time. This is a little different than me “going along,” asshole, she thought at him. He brought his hand to her face and for an instant she flinched, afraid he might have read defiance in her. She hadn’t meant it. All he did though was chuckle and stroke his fingers down her cheek.

Something about the gesture made her shiver. Abruptly he turned away from her and headed down the walk back to the house. Adele stood watching after him for a moment with her hands on her hips, shaking her head. It wasn’t bad enough, she’d have to deal with him being moody? That door better not be locked when I get there, she thought. It wasn’t though. Anyway if it had been what would she have done with herself out here all alone? Probably just stood and knocked.

The house was big and mostly dark, and it felt empty. Echoey. Adele went where there was light showing, a living room or something past the front stairs, which had stuff in it but the sort of stuff that only made a place look emptier. Tacked-up blackout curtains for drapes. Big TV on the wall, an Ikea-type couch and table, a couple overstuffed armchairs. Nothing matched. Game console. Two bored-looking girls were on the couch, one blonde one brunette, playing some sort of car-racing thing. Both of them naked. One girl, the brunette, acknowledged Adele with a quick nod. “Hey,” she said.

Unsettled, Adele glanced over at the dude, wondering how extra girls changed the equation. He’d drifted over near the windows and was standing there absorbed in something with his phone. Adele tried to catch his eye. “Should I …” she asked, gesturing toward the couch. She didn’t feel remotely like undressing in front of them but it certainly wasn’t something to be a stick-in-the-mud about. He looked at her blankly for a beat, then shook his head yes and flashed her a thumbs-up. Still fixated on his phone he opened a door at the farther end of the room and walked out.

“Mister politeness,” Adele muttered under her breath. She only had on shorts and a t-shirt, and she was halfway out of them before she quite realized it. She got a queasy feeling hooking her fingers into her panties but when they were gone it was actually kind of cool, being naked with the naked chicks. Like they were in the same club. The blonde glanced at the sad little pile at Adele’s feet. “Won’t be wearing those anymore,” she said wryly. The brunette, eyes glued to the game, told her “Pick em up, he don’t like messes.”

Adele dropped the clothes on the nearest armchair. The brunette looked narrowly at her. “You eighteen at least?” she asked. “I just look young,” Adele said, nodding. The blonde took her hand off the controller long enough to flash her own thumbs-up.

“Sit,” the brunette said, patting the empty space on the couch next to her. Adele pushed the clothes to the back of the armchair and flopped down there instead.

The blonde, on the far end of the couch, glanced around the brunette over towards Adele. “You’re gonna wanna shave that you know.”

“Yeah,” the brunette said in the direction of Adele’s crotch, “he’s got a thing about bush. Not right away though, you have to wait’ll he tells you. He likes to supervise.”

Great, a no-bush creep. Adele’s favorite kind of guy. It’ll grow back, she told herself. The girls started a new level and forgot her for a couple minutes. It felt a bit like hanging out in someone’s house you didn’t really know while a friend was off scoring drugs, Adele thought. Same combination of aimlessness and tension. The blonde put her controller down. “Hey, are you pizza delibery?” she asked.

Adele said “What?” and the brunette snorted and said “You said ‘delibery.’” “Did not,” the blonde huffed. “Delibery. Deliber— Fuck.”

“You say it,” the brunette ordered Adele, and she did. “Delivery.”

“Dude,” the brunette crowed, “you can’t say delibery right. Wait.” The blonde’s face lit up. “Neither can you!” she said, punctuating it with a slug on the brunette’s arm. The brunette winced and seemed to deflate

“It’s one of his dumb games, he likes to fuck up how we say things,” she said to Adele, half-apologetically.

“I’m not, uh,” Adele stammered, “yeah I haven’t got any. Pizza to bring.” It was awkward avoiding saying deliver. “Last time I mean,” the blonde said. “The other night.”

“I liked that pepperoni,” the brunette added.

“The other night,” Adele said. It was like trying to coax back a dream. “Late. Yeah.” Three-pie order. Tipped well. Was it the same guy? But she couldn’t put a face. Weird to think the girls had been around then too.

“Yeah, he said you’d be on by. DoorDash,” the brunette said, pointing to herself, and gesturing to the blonde, “Instacart.” “Dude likes his delibery girls,” the blonde snickered.

“Delibery girls,” the brunette repeated, heavily sarcastic. “Oh fuck off,” said the blonde. Her game controller was resting on her belly and she moved it absently onto the couch. “You sound so fucking stupid when you say it like that,” the brunette said. They were staring hard into each others’ eyes. The brunette licked her lips. “You sound so fucking brainwashed,” she said, and then her tongue was down the blonde’s throat.

Adele decided she wasn’t comfortable in the armchair and slid off onto the floor, arranging herself into a half-assed lotus in front of the TV. They were hot girls but it felt tawdry watching them grope each other in front of her like they were putting on a cam show. She didn’t even know them. If only there was something happening on the screen. Maybe next tine they came up for air one of them could throw her a controller. She wasn’t that big on video games but at least it’d be something to do.

But then they went back to racing and she forgot to ask. That was the thing about tagging along on a drug buy: it was theoretically crime-adjacent but mostly all you were was bored and distracted. Adele kept to herself and tried to follow the action. She had no idea where in that big empty house the guy had got to, or if he was even still around. She almost wished he’d come back just to break the monotony.

“Yo, pizza.” With the game on pause Adele had zoned out for a minute. The cute blonde was leaning across her friend’s thighs. She had a wicked glint in her eye. “You gay yet?”

“Jesus, Cart,” the brunette said, swatting the blonde on the back of her head. “She ain’t been here an hour yet. We’re not gay,” she told Adele firmly. “She’s not hitting on you.”

“Hit on whoever I want,” the blonde pouted, rubbing the spot. She shot the brunette a mocking look and told Adele, “We’re not gay, we’re just extremely into pussy lately.”

Adele didn’t care if they were gay. It just wasn’t her thing. Although maybe it was his thing. Of course it was his thing. But how did he think it was supposed to happen? Leave her alone naked with a couple lesbian gamers till she just spontaneously decided to go over the fence? Out of sheer boredom? Adele felt almost disappointed in the dude, if that was all the imagination he had.

She cleared her throat. “So, um, how long you been at this?” she asked.

The two of them shared a look. “So, pizza was which night?” the brunette said. “Was that the end of the second day or the third?” “Asking me dude, you got here before I did” the blonde said, and then for a minute or two they bickered fruitlessly between them about when they’d eaten what and how much time it was since which of them had been snared.

When Adele said how long she hadn’t been thinking days. Her heart sank. “And nobody’s missed you yet,” she broke in. Immediately she regretted phrasing it like that.

The couch girls didn’t seem to take any implication from it. “He took our phones,” Cart said. She had herself wrapped up in her half-reclined partner’s arms, snuggling her cheek against DoorDash’s breasts. “He fakes the odd check-in,” the brunette added, sounding blasé, “we like, text excuses to people or whatever, whatever he tells us,— really though it’s been pretty chill.”

He had her phone too, Adele realized. In her bag. Which she’d handed over as soon as he walked up to her, without him saying a word. Didn’t even notice herself doing it. Now if she wanted to leave she’d have to ask for it back. Guess I’m here for the duration, she told herself.

It didn’t bother her though. Better to know. The calm she felt was almost surreal. Some little tension she hadn’t even noticed in her had let itself go, and now she was clear. So she’d be hanging out with the girls a while longer. The stay wasn’t doing them any harm. Maybe she’d pick up some gaming chops.

Cart poked her head up. “We quit our jobs!” she offered brightly. She seemed to think it was a selling point. “Less distractions that way. You know, from pussy,” she added wickedly. Dash only sighed and looked off into space.

They really were cute together though, Adele thought. Real cute energy. You could see how somebody might want to keep them around for it, especially if they didn’t care about being watched. Cart with that sassy little mouth,— it looked it too, kissing her would be like biting into a Granny Smith. Adele felt her own mouth watering and shook her head. Let’s not go down that rabbit hole. “So, you guys have just been …“ She balked at where the question seemed to be going, but couldn’t think of another. “I mean, for however long you’ve—“

“Yep, gaming ordering in and fucking, pretty much,” Dash said. “Not him,” the blonde added. “No,” Dash hurried to agree, “no we don’t fuck him. He likes us fucking though. Or you know, making out, whatever.”

“I’m not sure he’s even into sex,” Cart confided after a pause.

“Titty massage,” the brunette countered. “And we have blown him a few times,” she told Adele. “Call those blowjobs,” Cart said to Dash. “Have you ever even really had his dick in your mouth? We make out and he just sort of, gets in our way for a bit and then he nuts.” She looked at Adele like she expected a ruling. The brunette shrugged the question off.

Adele wondered if they’d go back to playing soon. She looked around surreptitiously for a switch for the room lights. It was too bright for a sex fantasy. There was no mystery. She thought of the girls absorbed in their big bright game while she stared up at them from her private dark, the screenglow plying over their skin. Watching their tits move and losing track which one was who.

“You guys must be getting real good at racing by now, huh,” Adele said.

Dash scoffed. “It’s not about the games,” she said. Cart sat up and looked at Adele like she thought the girl was slow. “Dude,” she said, gesturing towards the TV, “how else do you think he brainwashes us?”

“AAARRNNGHHH—“ the brunette made a game-buzzer noise. “What?” Cart said, in wide-eyed dismay, “no!” and her shoulders slumped. Dash was shaking her head. “You lose, pal!” she said, throwing a quick look Adele’s way. “You know the rules, pay up.” The blonde was blushing furiously, the redness extending over her chest. “Scuse me,” she said to Adele, not meeting her eyes, and sprawled herself forward onto the floor between Dash’s legs.

“First one to use the b-word in front of you has to eat the other one out,” the brunette told Adele. She closed her eyes for a second and cooed at whatever Cart’s tongue was doing. “Which is a hard game to play, because we fucking love brainwashing.”

“I think you said it first,” Adele told her meekly.

“Yeah well, she didn’t call it,” Dash said. “Hear that?” she asked, grabbing a hunk of Cart’s hair and shaking her with it. The blonde moaned. “Gotta call it next time bitch!” Dash closed her eyes again and tilted her head back and rode her pussy harder against her friend’s face.

There was a wet-sounding interval, then the brunette sighed a short, heavy sigh and tapped Cart on the top of her skull. She looked back down at Adele and her eyes widened. She singsonged an “uh-oh” and tapped more urgently. “Check it out,” she said, and the blonde, her eyes vague and her mouth smeary-looking, finally lifted herself off of Dash’s pussy. She grinned wolfishly at Adele’s lap. “Aww yeah,” Cart said, “pizza in the house!”

Adele looked down and saw that she was fingering herself. And keeping on doing it. That kind of surprised her. She’d never masturbated in front of anyone before, not even boyfriends. She would have assumed she’d be too embarrassed. It was awfully sexy though, feeling like she couldn’t stop. That part of it was even hotter than being watched.

Adele locked eyes with Dash and got up over her knees and slid a second finger in, deep as she could. She was so wet there was barely even a push. She ran her tongue over her lips all lewd at the brunette and never once felt the urge to look away. She’d taken improv. She understood yes and. If she was gonna have to want this, then she might as well goddamn want it.

“Come on Peetz,” Dash said, laughing and leering at her and rubbing the couch cushion next to her with her palm, “come on sit up with the big girls.” Cart scuttled a couple feet over to get in position. Once Adele was on the couch her fingers went automatically back to her pussy, but Dash caught her hand up instead and carried it to her mouth and started licking.

The first touch of Cart’s tongue splitting her pussy convinced Adele that any time she’d spent not getting eaten out by girls in her life had been a waste. She wanted to grind herself against the blonde’s mouth just like Dash had but was wary of disturbing her. She was about to give in all the same, then something cold bumped up against her ear and Adele startled.

“Shhh,” Dash whispered. She held up a pair of earbuds. “Just a little white noise,” she said. “Don’t want nothing to bother you.” She fit one of the buds in Adele’s farther ear, while she pressed a wet, lingering kiss on the near one. “We are gonna have soo much fun together, Pizza,” she crooned, and then Adele’s head filled up with cotton candy.

She sensed movement after a bit, and saw it was the dude come back. He was standing there like a goober in front of them with his dick in his hand, because of course he was. Dude likes his delibery girls, Adele thought, giggling to herself. Or was it pronounced delibery. It was so distracting which was which that when he spooged on her she wasn't ready, and had to stifle a laugh.