Double Helix Ch. 18

He drove up after four in a semi-truck and flatbed trailer loaded with prefabricated reinforced concrete columns, supports, and wall panels. His wife arrived just after him with another truck hauling a crane. Each piece of concrete had to be chained up and lifted one-at-a-time to a staging area off to one side, so all of the genemods except Wendy pitched in to help. It was hard work, and well after dark by the time we had finished.

I lacked the endurance and resilience of my gene-modded housemates, so I was ready to curl into a ball and pass out from exhaustion by the time we got the last piece of concrete off the truck and Andy and Abby drove back to the road, heading for Portland. Everyone ate double helpings of the vegetable and rice dish that Wendy had prepared.

Tilly sat to my right at the big dining room table, and Nissi on the other side of her. I had noticed that they tended to touch frequently, often clasping hands as they were doing now, and it made me feel the need to put my own hand on Tilly. I ate with my left hand so that I could caress her back with my right, and she turned an adoring smile on me that sent chills down my body. I loved her so much that I practically ached to hold her.

"So how did the sims you were going to run go?" I asked, catching Nissi in the middle of laughing at something Wendy said.

She settled herself and nodded excitedly. "Better than I could have hoped. If we run the full battery of aging treatments first, it gives us the highest chance of avoiding complications."

"Wendy said this," Nonna said from the end of the table. "How young will I be?"

Nissi stared into the distance for a moment before she spoke. "We're not entirely sure. The documents we have only talk about the effects on tissues, though they mention renewed cognitive ability. If I had to guess, you'll be back in the prime of life, the way you were in your twenties or early thirties, though some tissues, your bones, for example, would take more time to regenerate than others."

Nonna looked pensive. "Is much to..." she frowned, "to con...see...der." She said the word slowly, as though it were unfamiliar to her.

"You would have your mind back," Nissi said.

"And maybe another lifetime to live," Wendy put in.

Nonna just frowned and resumed eating, so the conversation drifted elsewhere. It was a minute or two later that she said, suddenly. "I do this."

Nissi stopped mid-sentence and turned to her. "The treatment? Treatments? You want to go ahead with them?"

"I write this down, as the lawyer say. I know is risk. I want this."

"That's great," Nissi said. "I'll let the team know. We can get started once the lab is fully operational."

I finished quickly and excused myself from the dinner table, heading for the den. Sitting down behind the desk, I brought up a text editor and typed out a single line, "Dear Mom and Dad." There I stopped, my hands hovering over the keys.

"Oh, hey," Nissi said, pausing at the doorway to the den. "I can come back later."

"I should only be a minute," I said, my eyes returning quickly to the screen. Composing this message should be a simple task, but nearly two years had passed since my parents had heard anything from me. I couldn't leave a long message, but I felt the need to explain myself.

My fingers finally began to move. "I realize that you probably thought I was dead by now, but things have been complicated. Please open the attached self-installing application tomorrow, Friday, between 9am and 11am. It will encrypt your web traffic and connect you to a hidden network where we can talk without putting any of us in danger. I love you both,

Martin."

I packaged the text using an application that Tilly had developed, tagged the email with a longtime church friend of my mother's and sent. It would travel through the darknet to a node halfway around the world, then exit to the public internet and make its way to Minnesota. The VPN it would connect to was a temporary, miniature version of our darknet.

"All yours," I said, standing and nodding politely at Nissi. "Please keep me informed about Nonna's treatment."

"Of course," she said, sitting and flipping her hair out of the way of the chair back.

Tilly met me as I returned to the living room. "You're really sore," she said. "Let's get you a hot bath."

I rolled my shoulders, feeling the ache in my back that I had been ignoring even as it slowly crept in. "That sounds nice."

I sat on the toilet seat as Tilly ran my bath, adding a generous helping of Epsom salt to the water. "I wish I had enhanced muscle tissue," I said wistfully. "You were out there working twice as hard as I was, and you don't feel it at all, do you?"

Tilly studied me. "What's gotten into you, Norm?" Then her puzzlement turned abruptly to realization. "It's your sister, isn't it?"

I shook my head. "It's almost creepy how you do that. Yeah, I guess I've had her on my mind today."

"It's ready," she said, flicking the water from her fingers from checking the temperature. She shut off the water and helped me to undress and stagger to the tub. "You were starting to lock up a bit. This should feel really good."

I sank into the languid heat, just at the brink of being uncomfortable, and felt my tortured muscles immediately begin to unclench. "Oh, that's...that's very good," I sighed. "I love you, Tilly."

She smiled at me, then knelt next to the tub and leaned over to kiss me. I let her take the lead, her tongue moving playing slowly over mine as her fingers stroked sensually through my hair. Her other hand trailed down my body and found me fully erect beneath the surface of the water. Her fingers closed lightly around it and stroked gently, never breaking the kiss. She hummed in pleasure as I moaned into her mouth.

When she finally let me go, I slumped against the back of the tub. "God damn, girl," I said. "Have you been taking lessons?"

She looked away, a mischievous sparkle in her eyes. "Well, I may have tried a variation of that little move a few nights ago."

I rolled my eyes, "Of course." I submerged my head and came up so that she could shampoo my hair.

I had thought that sharing Tilly with Nissi would be awkward and uncomfortable, and it had, at first. It had taken me a few weeks to start to relax and truly accept that nothing substantial had changed between the two of us. Tilly loved me just as she had before. I had grown comfortable enough with the idea that I even got a little voyeuristic thrill hearing about some of the things the two of them got up to. Besides that, Nissi had apparently put the brakes on after that first night, and the time they spent together was more in getting to know each other better. They shared a lot of touching and kisses, but as far as I could tell, they hadn't had a repeat of the wild sex they had experienced on Christmas night.

After a few more minutes soaking, I got out and toweled off, still bone-weary but a lot less sore. Tilly kissed me again. "I'll be with you shortly," she said, and began stripping to take a shower.

I padded down the hall to our bedroom and fell onto the bed on my back with an "Oof" before realizing that I hadn't peeled back the covers. Grumbling at myself, I somehow managed to do that without getting out of bed, flailing my arms and lifting my body in a way that probably took more effort than simply getting back up would have done.

I struggled to keep my eyes from closing, and as it was, I had to force them open when the bedroom door creaked open. Tilly came in with a towel around her body and another wrapping up her hair. Humming to herself, she put the first towel over one shoulder immediately and moved about the room in the nude. She paused at the dresser and removed the matching opal necklace and earrings that she often wore, items left by one of Stansy's relatives. Then she used the towel to get the remaining patches of water she had missed, casting quick glances my way.

"Scanning" she called that, when she took in a person's appearance to update her mental model of their emotional state. She knew exactly what her seemingly innocuous display was having on me. I was nearly at full mast again. Women crave the attention they got from displaying their bodies, but Tilly was the only woman who got instant feedback of just how much of an effect they were having. Her bending at the waist to apparently dry her ankle, presenting the smooth round globes of her ass framing that perfect little pussy, was calculated to send my arousal into overdrive.

She turned to me, her lips curling into a predator's smile upon feeling the full force of my reaction. She uncoiled the towel from her hair, shook it and brushed it out with her fingers, and came straight for me. She threw back the covers, exposing my hard cock, and climbed in, straddling me. Holding my gaze with her own, she maneuvered slowly back and down, finding the head of my cock unerringly with her pussy. "Oh, Norm," she sighed, biting her lip as the tip slipped inside. She settled her body over mine, the warmth of her a balm to the pain and weariness of the day.

She moved slowly, sinking my cock deeper into her until our bodies fetched up together. Groaning, I rocked my hips, but she somehow managed to match my movements almost perfectly, holding me steady inside her. I tried maybe four thrusts, but stopped when it brought me only the smallest stimulation. "What are you doing?" I asked, more curious than anything.

"I want you to relax and be perfectly still," she said. "Let me make love to you. Just close your eyes and feel. Okay?"

"Okay," I said, and closed my eyes. I trusted her completely and a shiver of anticipation went over me as I awaited whatever she had planned for me.

Tilly shifted slightly, sending a brief but delicious pulse of pleasure out from where our bodies connected, and then I felt a warm, wet touch at my nipple. I jerked slightly in surprise and she paused, her tongue held still against me, but I quickly relaxed again. The few times a lover had tried this on me, the results had been less than inspiring, but I knew that she would figure things out for herself.

Rather than backing off and trying something different, though, she continued to probe and caress it with her tongue. She moved her body, too, not a forward and back thrusting, though, but an odd twisting of her hips. The sensation was mild, but like nothing I had felt before, and I sighed, luxuriating in it.

It was only after a minute or two of this subtle stimulation that I felt something new. She had begun to switch back and forth between my nipples, adding little nibbles using the barest pressure with her teeth. It was like something dormant had awoken. What before had been a bland sensation, devoid of sexuality, now sent little jolts of pleasure right down to my cock each time she touched one of my nipples with her tongue or gently squeezed with her lips or teeth. And each time, she gave that little twist, spiking the sensation even higher.

"How did you do that?" I asked, grinning in wonder at this new discovery.

She paused in her attentions to kiss me. "I didn't do much," she said. "You've always been able to feel this. Your mind just never quite made the connection until now."

She began to move her hips, adding a little thrust to the movement, as she returned to pleasuring my nipples. Staying still was getting harder to do. I decided to test her with a quick counter-thrust against her movement, but she must have anticipated the motion somehow, as she canceled it with her own hips, riding me perfectly even as I thrust several more times, each one harder and faster than before. "Oh no," she said with a little chuckle. "I've got you now. You can't get away. You might as well lie there and enjoy it."

Her playful words, delivered in a smoky tone of confidence, somehow made my whole predicament even hotter. I swear my cock grew even harder inside her. I groaned in deliciously frustrated need, but relented, surrendering myself to her control. This reversal of roles had happened to me once before, with Nissi, but that had been different. That had been fueled by desperate arousal.

This was calculated and yet deeply intimate. It was about discovery and pushing boundaries. As she had said, I was well and truly caught, and would go wherever she took me. I focused on breathing deeply and relaxing, letting her do as she wished and simply feeling. The urgency gradually relented as I relaxed still further, accepting what she gave and demanding nothing.

Heady sensation trickled from the gentle friction of her body against mine. Time drifted. For all I knew, it might have been an hour or only a few minutes that I basked in that warm, peaceful glow when something began to change. Tilly's steady breathing became more ragged. She stopped abruptly and let herself melt into me, letting me take the full weight of her for the first time since she had begun. Her breathing came shorter and faster even as she held perfectly still. "I can't...stop it," she whimpered, her voice edged with frustration.

"Just let it happen, Tilly," I said putting my arms around her to pull tightly against me. I knew that sometimes she could catch herself and hold off from orgasm, but it was hit or miss.

I felt a quivering at the base of my cock as she gave a cry, and then she was squeezing me hard along its length, as her body rocked in spasms. Suddenly I was catapulting towards my own climax. I began to thrust my hips without thinking, driving my cock in and out.

"No," she moaned through gritted teeth, "Norm."

It took a massive effort of will not to keep going, but I somehow managed to halt my movements even as her orgasm began to subside. I had been right at the edge, still was, as her pussy gently gripped and relaxed. I remained motionless as she came down.

Finally, she took a deep breath and lifted her weight off of me, still keeping me inside her. "I almost ruined it," she said. "I was so focused on what you were feeling. I didn't realize I was so close."

"Almost ruined what?" I asked. I glanced at the clock on the nightstand. She had been at this for at least thirty minutes.

"You'll see," she said with a ghost of a smile.

She waited another minute for my arousal to subside before moving again. This time, she lifted off of me. I felt my cock withdrawing from her pussy until just the very tip remained inside her. She abruptly reversed, but instead of letting me sink all the way inside, she stopped again once the lips of her pussy had closed around the head of my cock, withdrew to the very tip, then back in.

This new stimulation was much more intense than what she had done before, but still not enough to drive me firmly towards orgasm. She teased me like this a few minutes before slowly sliding my cock back into her depths and resuming her earlier motions. Her lips returned to my nipples and we were back to where we were before. I realized now, though, that she had been building me up the whole time, moving me closer and closer to climax, so slowly that I couldn't tell.

Now she alternated with that tip-teasing move, which I was quickly learning to enjoy immensely. She played my body like a finely-tuned instrument, and this time I sensed my own approaching climax. Just when I felt myself reaching the point of inevitability, she stopped all motion.

"Oh, God, Tilly," I said. I was hanging right at the edge. Pleasure swam over me. My cock twitched inside of her, but I did not go over. She moved ever so slightly, holding me there for a long moment. When I began to feel myself pulling back from the edge, she plunged a bit farther up and down my shaft, bringing me right back again. This time, I hung there a bit longer, the pleasure pooling in my thighs before ebbing. Muscles in my legs and arms twitched involuntarily.

"Like that?" she asked, riding me up to the edge a third time. For answer, I lifted my head and kissed her, pouring my love into her. She tensed for a moment, but then relaxed. I knew the reason a moment later as she moaned into the kiss and her pussy squeezed my cock. She cried out in sudden ecstasy.

That sent me sailing over the edge as well. The pleasure was blindingly intense, the long build-up and then the maddeningly pleasurable tease and denial multiplying the force of my climax. "Fuck! Oh, fuck, Tilly!" I cried, as I crested. As I began to shoot inside her, she screamed in answer. Her pussy quivered up my length and then clamped down even harder than before. I smiled to myself as my pleasure faded, my cock still pumping semen into her in ever-weaker pulses.

In contrast, she was just getting started, the steady grip and release of her sheath down the length of me signaling her body's total commitment to giving her pleasure. I eased my cock out of her before it had a chance to become too sensitive. I held her as her mind shut down completely, and a babble of words tumbled out of her. "Norm. Fuck. Please. God. Fuck." I always found it amusing that only when she was in the grip of these orgasmic fugues did she lose control so completely that she would sometimes spout profanity, and she wouldn't remember it later.

I held her and stroked her back as she rode out the orgasm, enjoying the weight and warmth of her body on mine. I even got hard again after a few minutes and considered, as I had many times before, thrusting my cock back inside her while she was deep under. As always, I decided to wait it out, enjoying the sight, sound and feel of a woman lost completely to sexual pleasure.

I was beginning to doze off when Tilly stirred. She rose to her knees and reached to turn off the lamp switch, but came right back, resting her head on my shoulder. "I hadn't planned for that to happen. Nissi says I have a hair trigger wired up to a bombshell."

"I'm not complaining. It was good. Really good."

She made a happy noise and snuggled in tighter against me. I stroked my fingers through her hair and down her back, and she fell asleep in seconds.

Nock woke us all the next morning to start work. Wendy had agreed to monitor the terminal and let me know if my parents connected to the VPN that Tilly had created for me. After an early breakfast and three pots of coffee, we headed out to start the day. Daniel was bringing a cement truck from Corvallis in the afternoon, but we needed to get a base down first to ensure that the foundation didn't settle and crack.

The six of us, working together, put the base down in layers, wetting and compacting as we went, until we had it a foot thick from end-to-end. Once that was done, we set up the rebar cage over the next few hours, forming a lattice structure that would greatly strengthen the foundation.

I kept checking the time, and when the deadline I had given my parents approached, I excused myself, climbing an extension ladder to get back to the surface and hurrying inside. I found Wendy sitting at the terminal reading a book, her cat seated in her lap, tail twitching as she purred loudly.

"Oh, hey," she said, looking up at my entrance. "I've been checking every minute or so, but nothing so far. When we got past 11, I wasn't sure if I should go get you or keep watching for them. It looks like they didn't go for it. I'm sorry."

"You did fine," I said. "I wasn't sure if they were actually going to show. They might not know what to think. Their son suddenly shows up out of nowhere asking them to install and run software on their terminal? I don't blame them for being suspicious."

"How are you going to get word to them?" Wendy asked. "Send another email explaining everything?"

I shook my head. "I don't know. I don't want them trying to send a message back. They might be surveilled, especially since there's a possibility that someone has connected the man responsible for that police officer's death in Seattle to the guy volunteering with an Agency safe house who slipped away from them in LA."