Double Helix Ch. 02

She stood and stepped in front of me, giving me a delicious view of her naked body before she drew on her night gown. Kneeling, she planted another kiss on my lips before drawing back. "Good night, lover," she said. She slipped away and back to her own bed without another word.

I was prepared for the jibes the next morning. Wendy was the first to broach the subject when I emerged for breakfast. "So, how was your night, Norm?" she asked innocently. The knowing smile on her face said it all.

"Oh, I had a good night, thank you," I said, equally innocent.

Nissi was already up and looking fantastic in her simple blouse and pants. Her hair, usually combed neatly and either up in a ponytail or spilling down her back, was in sexy disarray. I went over to give her a kiss good morning, which she accepted easily and without hesitation. It seemed pointless not to be open about our relationship.

I spent a few hours after breakfast researching videos and how-to guides and pricing. Once I had it all worked out, I went upstairs. I found Sasha having coffee and watching the Travel Channel with her mother in the living room. "Can we talk?" I said.

"Let's go to my office. I'll be right back, Mamka."

She closed the door and had a seat behind her desk. "Alright, what can I do for you, Norm?"

I unfolded the piece of paper I was carrying and held it flat on the desk. She looked over the list of items I had with prices in another column to the right. "Okay, what's this for?"

"That's a bathroom," I said. "There's enough lumber and drywall to enclose the toilet and shower, plus a door, all the tools I need, primer and paint. I've pre-measured everything. It will be six feet by twelve feet. I would like to replace the sink, but it's a bit out of my budget."

"What about the water? Won't you need tile in there around the shower?"

I was pleased to see that she didn't just shoot my idea down. I pointed to one of the line items. "Paperless drywall. It's water resistant. We'll want to keep the plastic curtain up in there for the time being to protect the walls from direct water, but I'd like to get tile up when we can. An exhaust fan would also be nice, but I need to look into how to duct it to the outside."

"I notice that your budget seems to run just shy of $400. That is not a coincidence."

"Right. I wanted to use what I have in my account to pay for it."

Sasha leaned back in her chair, frowning in contemplation. "Do you have experience with this sort of thing?"

I grinned and shrugged. "I have the internet and a little DIY experience. What more do you need?"

She laughed. "Alright, I'll agree to it, on one condition."

"Let's hear it."

"I want a new set of basement stairs. If I supply the materials, can you and the others make it happen?"

I nodded almost immediately. I'd never done anything like that, but there had to be instructional videos I could look at. In any case, the work would be a welcome break from the boredom. "I'll start learning about it as soon as we're done here."

Sasha took me shopping with her to the hardware store that afternoon, after borrowing a pickup from a friend. The garage door rolled down after we backed in, the bed loaded with lumber and drywall panels. I carried the first 8' x 4' drywall panel carefully to the basement and downstairs, remembering the advice from a video tutorial that advised it was very easy to dent or tear a panel if you bumped into an edge or corner. Sasha grabbed the hammer, nails and toolbelt, that last coming out of her own funds, and followed me down.

"What's all this?" Stansy asked as I carried the panel across the room.

"It's part of your new bathroom," I said in a matter-of-fact tone. I couldn't help feeling a little smug satisfaction.

"Oh, my God. Really?" Stansy said, at almost the same moment that Wendy said, "Norm, that's awesome!"

"We could use some help," Sasha said. "I'll need to keep watch on the house, though."

The three women and two men all followed us back up. While Sasha went to her office to monitor the CCTV cameras on her computer, the rest of us hurried to the garage. Stan was first to arrive behind me. After I had taken a panel off the top of the stack, he looked at it for a moment, then grabbed four of the remaining eight panels and followed behind me, bearing the nearly 300 lbs. of weight effortlessly.

I warned Stan to watch out for corners as we wended our way back through the house and down into the basement. Stansy carried the remaining four panels, while Nissi and Nock between them brought the lumber and remaining tools. Wendy was the only one besides me who possessed human normal strength, actually human ten-year-old strength, so she carried the buckets of paint and primer. Once everyone had set down their loads, I looked over the materials stacked near the wall in satisfaction. We had everything we needed.

"Okay," Stan said, "what do we do to get started?"

We worked on it all through the day. I would like to say that everything went flawlessly, but as none of us had any real construction experience, some mistakes were bound to be made. Still, we managed not to outright waste any of the materials, and had built and raised both walls of the enclosure's frame by the afternoon. After that, the drywall went up quickly. "Wow, are we almost done?" Wendy asked as the last panel was being hung.

"Not really," I said. "There's still a lot left to do."

Now we had to sand and joint the panels. Everyone took turns at this, even Wendy, who had complained about feeling useless during the construction process. It would take a few days of that before we could paint, though, so we went ahead and constructed the door frame and hung the door. I finished that task before dinner with Wendy and Nissi's help, making the new room completely functional.

I stood next to the shower to inspect our handiwork. My muscles were knotted and sore, but I was happy. The shower took up most of the width at the end of the room, but there was a bit of space next to the new wall, where we had used the waterproof drywall. The toilet was a short distance away against the concrete wall. Next to that was a partial wall, with the sink just beyond it. We had placed the door near the structure's corner on the short wall, opening inward.

"I really want a mirror," Wendy said, "here", she pointed above the sink, "and here," now at the opposite wall. "That one needs to be full-length. Better lighting would be nice, too." We had brought in a floor lamp and placed it across from the sink where the door wouldn't knock it over, which wasn't the safest or best-looking solution.

"Maybe we can get one next month."

"Towel racks," Nissi said, "here next to the shower. And it really would be nice to have proper tile and a shower door."

"We'll do that too, in time," I said. "And maybe an exhaust fan."

She turned and folded me into her arms. "Thank you for doing this for us," she said. The hug soon turned into a slow and sensual kiss.

Wendy cleared her throat. "If you can pull your tongue out of his throat for a moment, Galadriel..."

I released Nissi and Wendy threw her arms around me. She just came up to the center of my chest and I had to resist the urge to pat her head. "Norm, this means so much to us."

"Don't thank me yet," I said. "Miss Gray made me promise to rebuild the stairs as soon as we're done here. I think I'm going to need everyone's help."

Nissi and I moved out to give Stansy, Nock and Stan a chance to have a look. "I think Wendy intends to move in," Nissi said to them and we all laughed. It felt gratifying to have made a difference, even if it was just to bring some privacy and comfort to the lives of the people here.

Tilly didn't come out for dinner, so I again offered to take her food. While she ate, I told her about the trip I had taken to Alaska right after I got my bachelor's degree, but she didn't say anything back to me. I suppose it was naïve of me to think that I had made some kind of breakthrough with her, but her movie comment last night had given me hope that she might be trying to reconnect with the people around her.

As she held her plate out for me to take, I noticed a pair of scars on her wrist. I didn't say anything, and tried to keep my expression neutral, but she reacted anyway to my momentary shock. The plate dropped through my fingers to shatter on the floor. Tilly rolled over on her bed to face the wall. "Go," she said in her small voice.

I knelt to pick up the pieces of the plate that I could find. I had never seen her wear shoes or socks, and I was concerned that she would step on a piece I might have missed. Once I was sure I'd gotten them all, I retreated as quickly and quietly as I could.

I sought Wendy out to tell her what I had seen and we went to the stairwell to talk. "I noticed them too," she said. "Two cuts on each wrist. There was a woman who took care of Tilly before I got here, an Edie. You know, Eidetic? She said Tilly had them when she first got here. I've heard that if someone is in depression deep enough, they lose the will to even try to take their own life. I've often wondered if it's like that with her."

"Genemod physiology isn't supposed to work like that," I said. "It's all serotonin and dopamine levels. Those kinds of problems were screened out, even in your generation."

"Could she have been made this way?"

That possibility hadn't occurred to me. "Why would someone deliberately build a genemod to be depressed?" I asked.

Wendy threw back the logical response. "Why would anyone make me? What about Nissi's compulsion to write music?"

"It's not really the same," I said. "Human brains are programmed to take delight in children, so that's at least understandable. And Nissi has a creative drive, not a destructive one. Tilly's condition makes no sense. Maybe it was a mistake. Or something happened to her in development."

"I think the only way you're going to find out is to ask her and somehow get her to answer you. I gave up on that months ago. Now I just do what I can to keep her comfortable." There was a tone of admonishment in her words.

"I won't push her," I said. "I just want to help."

"I know that. And I know you have good intentions, but I worry that she's in a fragile state. You've seen how she eats. I'm afraid that one day she might just stop. I'm not telling you not to try. Just to be careful."

Wendy stood and offered me her hand. I took it, but did nothing to help lift myself. After a moment, she was leaning back, pulling for all she was worth, and I couldn't stop myself from laughing. "You ass," she said, and punched me in the shoulder.

"That was a mistake," I said in as menacing a voice as I could muster. I grabbed her by the waist and pulled her in to tickle her in a maneuver long perfected on my little sister.

"Ah! No!" she squeaked before dissolving into uncontrollable laughter. "Stop!" she protested again through a fit of giggling.

I let her go and she lay fell back against the stairs next to me, panting. "Oh, that was so not fair," she scolded, but then she giggled again and sighed. "I'll get you back, you just wait."

We went back out to join the others and I approached Stansy. "I was wondering if I could borrow one of your books," I said. "Anything you would recommend?"

She led me back to her partition. It looked much like mine, but with a few changes to the locations of the furniture. She also had a thick rug next to the bed and two paintings hung on the concrete wall.

"Are these originals?" I asked. One was an expressionist watercolor of horses grazing in a pasture under a purple sky. The other was an oil painting of a woman with dark hair and bright, intelligent eyes. She was looking off angle to the viewer. Her expression was hard, determined. The face was coolly beautiful. Both the woman and the background were rendered in intricate detail, with the brushstrokes serving to enhance the dimensionality of the scene.

"They are," Stansy said. "I painted them. That one was a portrait I did of my mother when I was eight. I painted dozens more growing up, but I stopped when I started law school." I noticed then the small white pieces of paper that had been taped over the glass right where artist's signatures would be. Stansy's real name was hidden behind those.

"So," Stansy said, opening the top drawer of her dresser, "do you want my recommendation or would you like to pick?"

"What would you suggest?"

"Well, I think it's always good to start with the classics." She showed me the cover of the paperback. The title was "Dreadnought" and the author was C.S. Forester. "It takes place onboard the HMS Dreadnought during the World War and seems to be pretty accurate. I'm kind of partial to naval warfare. I used to have all of Forester's books, but this was the only one I got to take with me when I fled.."

"Okay, I'll try that one," I said. After she handed me the book, I said, "Have you ever thought of taking up painting again?"

She shrugged. "It actually never occurred to me. Why?"

I shrugged. "It would give us something to put up on the walls, if nothing else. I'm no judge of art, but I like what I see here."

A smile touched her lips briefly. "Well, thanks for the compliment."

I took the book back to my sleeping space and returned to the main living area. Nissi was watching a movie with the others, seated on the rug with her back to the sofa. Wendy sat above her on the sofa, legs crossed and leaning her head on Stan's shoulder. I sat next to Nissi and she took my hand. It was an old movie, with Humphrey Bogart as the lead. I never found out what the title was and mostly stopped paying attention when Nissi snuggled up against me a few minutes later. I ran my fingers through her hair and down her back through the rest of the film, making her hum and sigh in appreciation. When, by chance, my fingers touched the pointed tip of one ear, she shuddered slightly.

I could tell that the close contact and stroking was getting her worked up. She put her hand on my leg in a gesture that was perfectly chaste at first, but soon it began to wander, creeping ever upward. My erection was straining at its confines before long, even though her touching never quite made it that far. "Did you want to stay for the end?" she whispered, and her fingers tapped the inside of my thigh just inches from my cock.

"Hell no," I whispered back. It looked like a good film, but I had far more pressing matters on my mind.

Nissi stood, stretched and walked nonchalantly towards the sleeping area, throwing a "good night, guys" over her shoulder. I waited a few moments and made myself yawn. "I think I'm done for the night," I said.

"Have fun," Wendy said, and then yawned herself.

Shaking my head in amusement, I made a stop at the bathroom. The door was closed so I knocked. "Wait," Tilly said from the other side of the door.

I leaned against the concrete wall a few steps away and waited. The sink ran for a few seconds and Tilly emerged. She looked at me, but her eyes didn't quite meet mine. "You built this?" she asked.

I nodded. "Everyone helped, though. You like it?"

She turned to look through the open door, then back at me. Her lip trembled slightly and she blinked several times. Finally, she nodded. Her eyes settled on the floor and she walked past me and back to her partition.

I used the bathroom and washed up, thinking as I did that we needed to get some kind of storage cabinet in here so that everyone could keep some personal hygiene items on hand.

Nissi was already waiting for me when I slipped past my curtain. She had pulled back the covers on the bed and lay there naked. Her fingers teased her pussy in slow circles. "There you are," she said. "I had to get started without you." My arousal, already at a low burn, flared to life at the lascivious vision before me. Nissi never paused in her self-ministrations.

"I wonder if Tolkien ever imagined such a thing," I said, as I unbuckled my belt.

"Probably," Nissi said. "Men are barbarous pigs who only think about one thing. Now hurry up and get your pants off before I rip them to shreds."

I did undress faster, but not for the threat to my clothing. Naked, I leaned over and gave her a kiss. She returned it eagerly, biting my lip, though not hard enough to hurt. "I want your cock, not your tongue," she said.

I was only too happy to agree. I knelt at the edge of the bed and she took me in her mouth without hesitation. I sighed as pleasure radiated out into the rest of my body. Her moan of delight was muffled, which turned me on even more. When she released me a moment later, I let out a breath that I didn't realize I was holding.

"Fuck my mouth," she breathed.

I had never have a woman ask for that before, and it took me a moment to realize what she wanted. I grasped her by the hair at the nape of her neck and pressed my cock to her lips. She eagerly opened her mouth to let me inside and I began to thrust slowly back and forth. She moaned again and her fingers moved more urgently over her clit. I maintained that languid pace for a time until she grabbed the base of my cock long enough to gasp a single word, "Harder."

I responded by gripping her hair more tightly and ramming my cock into her. I had been concerned at first that she might gag, but whether through experience or some feature of her anatomy, she took the length of it easily. I knew though, that if I continued at this pace much longer, I was going to come, and this time I wanted to make sure that Nissi was taken care of first.

"Stay right there," I told her. I swung my leg over to straddle her head and lowered myself so that I was parallel to her body. She guided my cock back into her mouth and my tongue sought the warm, wet cleft between her legs. It felt a bit awkward at first, but quickly found my rhythm, plunging my cock deeply into her mouth as I licked and sucked the lips of her pussy. This new sensation distracted her enough that I was able to moderate the pace of my fucking and allow my arousal to recede somewhat while hers soared.

In no time at all, her body stiffened and I heard the muffled sound of her moaning in ecstasy. I slowed my pace just enough to hold her at the edge a few moments longer, so that when her climax finally came, it was that much stronger. I stopped my movement to let her ride out the waves of pleasure wracking her body.

As her orgasm began to fade, Nissi sucked fiercely at my cock once more. I let her suck it for a time, and she made a disappointed sound when I climbed off. "Do you mind...I mean, do you like to do it from behind?" I asked.

She casually flipped herself over, putting her petite bottom up in the air and settling her chest against the bed. "I do like me some doggy style," she said, and wiggled her hips in invitation.

Now how could I resist that? I climbed up behind her, pausing a moment to kiss the flawless, satiny smooth skin of her ass before I maneuvered in close. It took me a moment to get the positioning right, but no sooner had the head of my cock found the warm, soft lips of her pussy than she pushed back, letting her breath out all at once in a soft cry when it went deep inside her.

"That feels fantastic," I said and rocked very slightly as she pushed back against me. I had never been with a woman so sexually open before. I felt freed from the usual anxieties of being with a new partner. It felt like nothing was out of bounds, like she and I could do anything together.

"You should feel it from my end," she said.

I grabbed hold of Nissi's hips and began to ride her. She responded by moving along with me, my opposite but perfectly in sync. I tried to go slow, to draw things out, but very soon, the front of my legs and my waist were slapping hard against her ass and the backs of her thighs, and she was wailing in pleasure and matching the force of my strokes with her own. My orgasm built with surprising slowness but I knew it would not be much longer. "I'm going to come soon," I said.