Double Helix Ch. 14

With a growl, I turned and stalked off. I absolutely hate being manipulated, and Nock always played me like a goddamned flute. I found myself out the front door and crossing the dusty driveway before I realized where I was heading. I made myself stop to take a deep breath and reflect. Dumping on Martin about my little tiff with Nock was hardly fair. Whether he acknowledged it or not, Martin was the closest thing we had to a leader. He didn't need me running to him to cry about Nock being an asshole. I realized that I had another reason to see him, though. He needed to know about Nonna.

I cracked open one of the barn doors, expecting to see Martin seated over a workbench polishing some found piece of equipment, but the main room was empty. Martin had been hard at work over the last month and his efforts showed. The floor was dirt, but it had been swept clear of detritus. He had cleared the cobwebs that had festooned the rafters and dark corners of the barn.

Both of our vehicles were now parked, almost touching, in the large open area near the main doors, hemmed in on either side by six-inch thick posts that rose to beams supporting the ceiling twenty feet overhead. I circled Tilly's truck and made my way back to the livestock stalls. "Norm?" I called, peering down the corridor and into the individual stalls.

"Up here," he called back.

I scanned my surroundings and quickly found a wooden ladder. I climbed up to platform that spanned the space about ten feet above the floor. Sunlight poured onto the smooth wooden floor from an open window along the far wall. Martin was there, busily sweeping the expansive area. "Is this a hay loft?" I asked.

"Yeah, I think so. Cool, huh?"

I laughed. "That's not the first word that comes to mind. Why clean up here, though?"

Martin looked around and shrugged. "I don't know, really. This whole place was in pretty bad shape when we got here. I cleaned it up so we could use the main room as a garage, and I guess I just kept going. Does someone need me?"

That brought me back to why I had come here. "It's Nonna. She was having some kind of episode. She didn't recognize me or Wendy, and thought she was back in the Ukraine. She pointed a gun at me. Nock helped us to calm her down, and Wendy got her gun away."

Martin was nodding along as I spoke. "Yes, this happened once before back at Sasha's house. Sasha had to stop her from attacking me with a knife. You did the right thing, though I hate that you had to. That gun saved my life once."

"I just wish there were something we could do for her. She's only going to get worse as time goes on. Weren't they starting to reverse some of the effects with stem cell treatments before the Ban?"

"With limited success," Martin qualified. "They could repair some of the damage, but not halt the overall progression of the disease. To do that, you would need to find a way to stop amyloid-beta proteins from accumulating and attacking brain tissue. We already know of specific gene mutations that cause it, so any treatment for it would require altering a living patient's genetic code. Research into that kind of therapy was a bit dicey even before the Ban, with all kinds of practical and ethical considerations. In the current situation, no one is going to touch it and risk jail time."

"And yet they were letting parents tailor the genetics of their children for decades."

Martin leaned against the wall, the sweeping forgotten for the moment. "But there's a difference. It's a potential life versus an existing, living human. Remember, you were selected from among a few hundred genetically-modified embryos as the most viable one to be implanted in your mother's womb. And before that, your genetic model was tested tens of thousands of times under lab conditions to come up with a set of alleles that consistently produces viable embryos. Other than a few ugly mistakes back in the very early days, genemodding is a process that has rarely failed to produce exactly what you want. You don't really have the option to experiment on a few thousand adult humans to come up with a reliable treatment. You have to be fairly sure of the results before you test it on a single person."

"Yes, I get that," I said, "but what kind of life does Nonna have to look forward to? Her brain is eroding away. She's just going to get more forgetful and confused. I would risk a lot to avoid that kind of fate."

Martin had no answer to that, so he resumed sweeping. I wasn't done, though. I paced the width of the loft as I spoke. "Kristen said that the university in Copenhagen had already collected and stored the ten major genemods. Isn't it possible that there is other banned research that likewise has been preserved? There might even be hospitals and research groups out there that have continued working on a cure."

Martin didn't pause in his work, and I turned to look at him. He had a pensive look on his face, so I waited. "Catalina has set up message boards for our darknet," he said at last. "People have been using them for everything from discussing the midterm elections to posting food recipes. I was going to try making a vegetable biryani I saw there. Maybe you should go there and ask."

I hadn't spent much time on Tilly's network, so this was the first I had heard of the message boards. "I'll check it out. Thanks." I went to give him a kiss, going for a peck on the cheek, since he was still working, but as I leaned in, he dropped the broom and threw his arms around me. I melted into his embrace as his lips found the nape of my neck and that spot that sent chills all through my body and nearly made my knees buckle.

The world spun and a shock went through me as my back struck the wall of the hay loft. He grabbed my wrists and pinned them above my head, kissing and nipping savagely at my neck. God I loved it when he got rough with me. My body responded with a wave of giddy desire at the assault. My nipples hardened into twin nubs of sensitized flesh that ached to be squeezed and sucked.

A thought came into my head that sent a tingle down my body that settled into the cleft between my legs. I grunted and jerked my arms, struggling to free myself from his grip, but only using a fraction of my strength. "Let me go!" I shouted.

We both knew that I could have thrown Martin halfway across the loft if I had wanted to. He squeezed my wrists harder and pressed himself against me, crushing my body against the wall. "Don't you dare fight me," he said. "You've been a very naughty girl today, and now I'm going to do what I want with you whether you like it or not. Keep testing me, and I'm going to have to tie you up."

"Let me go!" I repeated, fighting him again without actually trying. Oh hell yes, I would call his bluff. I didn't see any rope up here.

He pressed against me again and spoke right into my face, the effect spoiled only slightly by our height difference. "You don't listen very well, do you?" He let go of one wrist, whirled me around, and somehow pretzeled both of his arms around my own, no doubt some t'ai chi chuan arm lock that Wendy had taught him.

I grunted in surprise as pain shot up my arm. "Ow. Norm, that really hurts," I said. That in itself was a shock. Sure, I had allowed him to put me in this hold, but now that he had me, I wasn't certain that I could get free without causing myself injury.

Instantly, the pressure pushing my elbow towards hyperextension relaxed. Martin waited a moment, careful not to break the scene, but giving me a chance to decide if I wanted to back out. I turned my head to the side and gave a slight nod to continue.

"I want you on your knees with your forehead against the floor," he said. "Do you understand?"

"Yes," I said.

"Yes, what?" He applied a bit of pressure, not as much as before, but enough to send a twinge up my arm. "Show some respect."

I yelped. "Yes, sir," I said meekly.

He released my arm and I dropped to my knees. I pushed my hands forward until my forehead rested against the hard floor. The distinctive jingle of a belt being unfastened came from behind me. I knew that this could mean a few different possibilities, and found that each of them equally excited me.

His shoes clomped on the floor as he circled me, fingering the belt in his hands. A shiver of anticipation went through me as he knelt behind me. "Put your hands behind your back," he said, "forearms together."

I did as he asked, and warm, rough leather encircled my wrists. The loop shrank as he pulled on the end of the belt. Then he worked the clasp. Wait... My curiosity got the better of me, and I broke character. "There's no way your belt tightens that far," I said, but when I wiggled my wrists, I found that they were held fast.

"I found a hole punch," he said with a laugh. "I told you I had come across all kinds of cool tools in here."

"And you punched a hole in your belt just so you would be able to bind up my wrists with it?" I said theatrically. "What kind of evil madman thinks like that?"

"I'm not mad," he said in a huff, "not totally, anyway. Now you just sit tight for a minute, and don't bother calling for help. There's no one to hear you for miles."

The floor creaked under his footsteps as he walked away from me and mounted the ladder to go down. I waited, playing the helpless maiden, but could hear him downstairs, whistling the chorus to Steve Miller's "The Joker."

"You're out of tune," I called.

"You're tied up in a hay loft," he said, and resumed whistling. "Eureka!" he said. "Just what I needed."

My forehead was starting to feel uncomfortable pressing into the rough wooden floor, so I shifted, laying my head to the side. I heard him climbing the ladder and fairly quivered in anticipation as he walked slowly up behind me. He spent the next few minutes tying an intricate pattern around my feet with a piece of rope. Once that was done, he lifted my skirt, exposing my bare bottom. "No panties," he said appreciatively. "Very nice. And I have a piece of leather right here with your name on it, slave."

"I'm not your slave," I spat, and made a show of struggling against the belt. Then I froze. Did he say leather? "Uh, Norm," I said with a nervous chuckle, "I was just kidding earlier about the whip." I pulled against the belt, for real this time. It gave under my effort, but only very slightly.

"Oh, I forgot all about the whip," he said, snapping his fingers. "But I remember right where I left it."

He couldn't be serious. What had I gotten myself into? I thought quickly. "Yeah, you'll probably need that and more," I said. "I can take whatever you have planned for me."

"Oh, so you think you can handle this strop?"

What the fuck is a strop? I thought. "Bring it on," was what I said.

I sensed Martin winding up, and braced myself for whatever was about to happen. The air split and the blow landed across my bottom like a tongue of flame. I yelped in surprise and pain. "How was that, slave?" he said.

"You bastard," I said theatrically, and struggled against my bonds. The rope felt like braided nylon cord, supple but strong. He had tied my legs together from my ankles all the way up to my knees in a criss-crossing webbing, giving me maybe an inch of space to move.

"Still feeling naughty, are we?" The strop came down again, this time hitting the backs of my thighs. The blow felt harder than the last one, and I jerked away involuntarily. With my arms bound, though, there was nowhere for me to go without losing my balance. Martin interspersed his words with strikes from the strop. Slap. "You will." Slap "Learn to." Slap "Respect me."

He peppered my ass with more strikes, leaving stinging lines across my skin It brought tears to my eyes, but also a molten wetness between my legs. Each hit of the strop sent a jolt of pleasure through me alongside the pain. I had clamped my mouth shut, but muffled whimpers still escaped my lips. He paused to pass a hand over my sensitized skin. His touch was warm and sensual, and he dipped between my legs to stroke upwards across the damp lips of my pussy. I purred in satisfaction.

"Like that, do you?" he said. When I didn't answer, he gave me a particularly hard blow that made me gasp. "I said, did you like that?"

"Yes, sir," I said quickly. It wasn't acting, not totally. I really didn't want another strike like that. Resisting him had been fun, but I was ready to cave.

"Do you want more?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good girl." Too late, I realized my mistake. The strop stung me again, just as hard as last time.

The air was forced from my lungs in a plaintive cry. I spoke quickly, before he could strike again, "N-no, sir, I didn't mean-"

"What did you just say?" His tone was calm, but with an edge of menace. "Do you still defy me?"

Oh shit, I thought. I had just contradicted him. There was only one way to go with this. "No, sir. I am sorry, sir. I meant to say that slave needs her punishment."

"That's better." He struck me on the ass again and again, not as hard as before, but the cumulative effect had left me with a continuous burn all over, punctuated by sharp and exquisite stings each time the strop hit, making my body jump involuntarily.

We had already gone longer in our play than was customary, and this new implement induced far more intense sensations than I had ever experienced. I fidgeted and strained against my restraints, caught between the desire to end things now and to see how they played out. Carefully, I craned my neck to look back at Martin through half-lidded eyes. I saw in his face a look of intense concentration before each strike, and careful observation of my reactions after. He was testing my limits, but doing so with the utmost care.

I put my forehead back against the floor and closed my eyes. My mind and body were a tempest of conflicting feelings, a wave of unfathomable love crashing against the howling misery of my ravaged nerve endings. I wept silently, little droplets splashing back onto my eyelids as my tears struck the floor. I could take this, but only because I trusted Martin with all of my being.

The shift was subtle, but I felt it the moment it took hold. The fire that blazed over my ass began to die down, the pain to fade. The hard edges of the floorboards pressing into my knees and forehead faded from my consciousness, along with the feel and the sound of sharp cracks of the strop. Conversely, my sense of smell seemed enhanced beyond all reason. I could smell the musky odor of Martin's sweat mixing with the earthy tang of hay, and even scent of leather from the strop, all of it infused by the intoxicating aroma of my own dripping arousal.

A fuzzy warmth had replaced the pain in my thighs and ass. That warmth now began to spread, wrapping my lower body in a tingling blanket. It crept down my thighs and upward along my torso. It curled between my legs and ignited a spark there. Pleasure sang through my body. I was a swirl of glittering motes, gusted aloft on the breeze that flowed through the open window, cool on my feverish skin. I floated in cozy darkness.

I don't know how long it went on, but when I opened my eyes, I found myself lying on my side. My head was on Martin's shoulder, and his fingers stroked my hair. I could move my arms and legs again so he must have removed my bonds. "What happened?" I asked. My voice sounded thick, as though I had just woken up from a long sleep. I didn't feel tired though. I felt unbelievably relaxed

"I'm not sure what happened," he said.

"Describe it to me. I want to hear your experience."

He sighed. "It's a little hard to describe. Your little show of resistance made me think you were ready for something more. I decided that I would keep going unless you told me to stop."

I chuckled. "I know. I watched you. You looked like you were doing calculus in your head."

He didn't share in my laugh, and his voice was heavy with emotion. "I could tell that I was causing you a lot of pain, but I was sure you would tell me to stop if you needed me to. After a while, you stopped reacting to the strikes at all. I stopped to check on you, and you were crouched there, just shuddering and moaning. You didn't respond when I said your name. Then, I saw that you had been crying."

I tilted my head up to look at him. He had a haunted look in his eyes. "Martin," I said, shaking my head slightly. "You didn't do anything wrong. This is what I wanted. I could have told you to stop any time."

"But you were crying."

Before I had met Martin, I hadn't realized it was possible to feel adoration and exasperation with someone at the same time and in equal measure. "It was an intense experience," I explained carefully. "I won't lie. That thing hurt like a motherfucker, and I almost tapped out, but then I saw the way you were looking at me, and I had complete trust in you. I knew that, as hard as the pain was to bear, you wouldn't really hurt me."

This seemed to placate him somewhat, but he raised his eyebrows. "Have you looked at yourself?"

"Not a lot of mirrors up here," I said. I moved a hand to touch my backside and winced. Carefully, I traced my fingers over bruises and welts. Now that I was aware of the damage, it began to ache in a slow pulse. "Jesus, Martin, you did do a number on me, didn't you?"

He wouldn't meet my eyes. "I guess I got a little carried away. I'm sorry."

"Would it help if I told you that even though I probably won't be able to sit down for a week, it was all worth it?"

That made him look at me. "It was that good?"

I nodded. "Total endorphin rush. I've never felt anything like it. It was like.." I struggled for words. ...like the best fuck I've ever had, just without the penetration."

He frowned. "But what if I like penetration?"

"I like penetration, too," I said. "That's not the point. It's like some kind of physiological and psychological hack."

"I'm no hack," he said, "I'm actually. Quite. Skilled." His hand stopped stroking my hair and wandered downward across my back. His touch pulled an involuntary sigh of pleasure from me. My nerves still felt sensitized and raw. He stopped short of my bruised bottom and glided back up my body again, sending shots of electricity up and down my spine. A dull ache formed deep inside me. Still looking into his eyes, I dipped my hand into Martin's jeans and closed my fingers around his cock. It was already halfway erect and rising fast. My desire to be taken, to be filled, overwhelmed my senses.

Abruptly, I rose to my knees and swung a leg over Martin, straddling him. I moved my torso down and back. The head of his cock bumped the tortured flesh of one thigh, sending a jolt of pain through me. Martin must have caught the wince on my face because his hands moved to grasp my body. Whether to stop me or to guide me, I didn't care. I had never felt such primal lust in my life, and I would not have him interfere. I grabbed his wrists in both of my hands and pushed them down, pinning them to the floor. I leaned over him, my hair falling around his face in a halo that glowed red-gold in the sun.

"Slave is going to fuck your brains out, sir," I said, moving my hips to capture his cock between my thighs. "Do you have any objections, sir?"

He stared at me as if I had just grown a pair of horns. "Um, no?"

I found my mark, Martin's cock head nestling against the lips of my pussy. I pressed back, and felt my body open up to take him inside, flooding me with pleasure. We both cried out as I slowly drove his cock home, sheathing it in the warm depths of my pussy. My ass came to rest on his thighs, punctuating my pleasure with a twinge of pain. I began to glide over him, panting and grunting like an animal in heat. "Told you," I gasped, "I like penetration."

For once, Martin seemed to be at a loss for words as I rode him, faster and harder. I released his hands and leaned back, lifting my head to the sky and keening in helpless pleasure. Martin's hands caught my breasts, pinching and twisting them to increase my sensation. When I came, it was like a charge had gone off deep in my belly, racing up my body to the top of my head. I fell into Martin and he caught me in his embrace, nuzzling my neck as I screamed in ecstasy. My climax left me unable to move for some time, but my need was far from sated. Soon, I began to move again, slowly at first, but with building momentum