by Serena Jones
Dr. Gregory nodded, his eyes hooded. “Yes, it is a relief. Miss Fortescue being my senior assistant and you being the junior, we are very happy that you, Mr. Brown, will be making the tea and wielding the broom.”
It took Elliot a good ten seconds to understand that he was not joking.
***
After the boy had left the premises, Elspeth shook her head. “He’s completely hopeless. It’s clear he knows nothing of science and has no idea what he’s doing.”
“Which rather suits our purposes,” Gregory said quietly. “I erred greatly in introducing you to my studies. All turned out well, but there was a moment where I thought I would have to free you from my service—and that you might set a policeman on me.”
“You mean, when you bound me to your Infernal Machine and aroused me to a state where I was desperate for an orgasm?” Elspeth asked.
Gregory cringed. He knew he’d crossed the line with Miss Fortescue. She’d protested several times before acquiescing to his Infernal Machine. He had truly believed she had the capacity to appreciate the experiment and would want to be a part of it, but he also knew he’d ignored her original “No” before accepting her later “Yes.” After Miss Fortescue had explained his wrong-doing, Gregory vowed never to do that again.
“Yes,” he said plainly now. “We shall test his suitability, as I did with you. But after that, I will need his explicit consent to continue.”
***
On his first day of employment, Elliot was assigned a task that, in his mind, seemed utterly pointless but was also exceedingly simple. He was getting paid for it, and he preferred easy over difficult, so he made no complaint. His instructions were to stand upon a platform above Miss Fortescue and duplicate her actions. When she threw a switch at her machine, he was to throw the corresponding switch on his machine.
If Elliot had only known, his assessment of the task was correct. It was indeed pointless. The switches did nothing except cause the machines to whir and hum and sometimes belch steam, all in an effort to give the appearance of function. In truth, the only thing Dr. Gregory needed from Elliot was for him to stand above Miss Fortescue and watch her.
Elliot found the view highly enjoyable. The “senior assistant”—he added the quotation marks in his mind—was wearing a dress with a bodice more suitable for an evening formal than a laboratory, but he didn’t mind the sight of her décolletage. It relieved the boredom of his task. While he watched her, duplicating her manipulation of the machine, his eyes caressed the snowy expanse of her breasts. So round. So perfect. She wore some sort of bauble, a clock contained in a glass globe, which rested in the crevasse where her two mounds pressed together, and her sleeves were adorned with strange leather cuffs, which gave her a rather exotic and fierce appearance. Her ample bosom and the leather cuffs together reminded Elliot of an Amazon warrioress.
Then it happened. Miss Fortescue reached over her head for one of the levers. The motion lifted her breast as well as her arm, and a pink tip slipped past her neckline. It took Elliot a moment to realize that this was her nipple, for he had never seen one before. Not a woman’s nipple, that is. He had of course seen his own.
Unlike many young men, Elliot had never collected those tantalizing cards featuring photographs of scantily clad women. He’d always been afraid they would be too tempting for him. Elliot’s mother had taught him from a young age that touching himself for any purpose other than urination or cleaning would lead to blindness. She held Uncle Mortimer up as an example. Elliot’s uncle, a bachelor, was not only blind; he was incontinent. “Precisely because he would not give up the heinous act even after he’d lost his sight!” Mama declared.
This was not to say that Elliot had never pleasured himself. When an accidental sighting of a female ankle roused poor Archie—for that was what he had named his penis—to a state of unbearable rigidity, Elliot would lie upon his stomach in bed and, without touching himself, make the movement he believed men made during coitus. By this method, he hoped to fool the mechanism that led to blindness, although he always fretted after his Critical Period, when he was lying in a sticky pool of pearly fluid, and tested his eyesight to judge whether it had dimmed at all.
The sight of a nipple was a good deal more titillating than an ankle, and Archie sprang upright at once. While Elliot watched in awe, Miss Fortescue reached overhead with her other hand, and out popped the second one. She did not notice this disaster but continued on with her work, oblivious to the nipples resting atop the neckline of her bodice. They were so much larger than Elliot’s own, pink in color, with tips the size of large corn kernels. Elliot fumbled through his assigned task, hardly aware of whether he was pulling the correct levers and not caring a whit if he did or not. Archie stood like an arbor vitae in his trousers, and Elliot trembled with the urge to stroke the poor bloke.
There was a bar on Elliot’s platform, meant to prevent him from stepping off accidentally, and as it was generously upholstered in soft leather, it made for a convenient place to rub Archie through the fabric of his trousers. Pleasure rippled along his belly, and with reluctance he had to periodically pull away from the bar lest he inadvertently reach his Critical Period and soil himself. And, of course, he did not want Miss Fortescue to look up or Dr. Gregory to walk into the room and catch him indulging in this forbidden pleasure.
Unbeknownst to Elliot, Dr. Gregory had been watching him all along from a nearby chamber with a secret view of the platform. Mr. Brown’s reaction to the sight of Miss Fortescue’s breasts proved that he was a healthy male specimen and a suitable candidate for Gregory’s experiments.
This was good news. Therefore, Gregory was puzzled by the resentment he felt watching Mr. Brown gape at Miss Fortescue while humping that bar. It was illogical. Mr. Brown would see a good bit more of his fellow assistant over the course of their work. He would probably even fuck her by means of the invention Miss Fortescue called “the Infernal Machine.” Nevertheless, Gregory thought that a proper gentleman would have averted his eyes and made some effort to control his erection.
As he had done, confining his rebellious penis in the Reminder.
Although he had meant to extend Mr. Brown’s test for at least another half hour, Gregory ended it early, ringing the bell that signaled the end of the activity and striding out into the workroom. “That is all for now,” he said. “You may come down from your platforms.”
Elspeth did so promptly, her breasts tucked back inside her bodice. Elliot took a little longer to descend. “I will come down shortly,” he called. “I … er … need to lace my shoe.”
This caused Elspeth to raise her eyebrows. “I take it the test was successful?” she murmured.
“Exceedingly so,” Gregory replied.
When Archie had sufficiently subsided, Elliot descended from the platform to find Dr. Gregory and Miss Fortescue waiting for him with some paperwork related to his employment.
“One of the things you must understand about my laboratory,” the scientist said, “is that my assistants serve as subjects in my experiments. If you are to be in my employ, you must sign this document giving me permission to experiment on your body.”
Elliot drew in his breath, startled and alarmed by the words experiment on your body. “Is this safe?” He suddenly wished he had asked Dr. Gregory exactly what his experiments were. He’d had no interest in their purpose until now.
“Yes, it is safe,” the scientist assured him. “No harm will come to you.”
“Is there a danger of poisoning?”
“You will not be asked to ingest anything.”
Elliot hesitated, caught between his need for the fine salary Gregory had offered him and his natural instinct to protect something he held quite dear—himself.
“I have been Dr. Gregory’s assistant for over two months,” Elspeth said, “and as you can see, I am quite healthy.”
She was indeed. Elliot drew in a breath. Well, if the girl could do it …
“Where do I sign?” he a
sked.
After that was accomplished, Dr. Gregory put him right to work, leading him to a strange sort of bench. It was narrow and one half of it reclined, rather like a fainting couch. Elliot was instructed to sit on it, with his back resting on the incline and his legs straddling the horizontal part of it. He did so, but found it a very undignified position.
“Now,” said the scientist, “if you would be so good as to put your wrists in these bindings …”
“Bindings?” Elliot exclaimed.
“It is simply to get your hands out of the way.”
Elliot balked at this, wondering if he shouldn’t have been so hasty signing that agreement. Then, Miss Fortescue said, “I was tested on this device only yesterday, Mr. Brown. I did not find it uncomfortable.” Blast it, Elliot felt bound to do it now for the sake of his own pride. He offered up his wrists. Dr. Gregory secured one hand, while Miss Fortescue did the other. Elliot watched, his brow furrowed, wondering how he could perform any sort of experiment in this position.
“Shall I do the honors?” Miss Fortescue asked.
“That would probably be best,” Dr. Gregory replied.
To Elliot’s utter shock and dismay, Miss Fortescue undid the fastening on his trousers. “What are you doing?” he cried out. “Aaarp!” He yelped wordlessly as the young woman’s hand closed around Archie and pulled him out into the open.
This was only the second male organ Elspeth had ever seen. It gave her some satisfaction to note that it was not as large as Dr. Gregory’s. Also, at the moment, it was soft and squishy. Standing back with her hands on her hips, she said, “Come now, Mr. Brown. You shall have to do better than that!”
It was perhaps the wrong thing to say. Mr. Brown’s member shrank even more.
Red faced and humiliated, Elliot glared at Dr. Gregory. “What is the meaning of this violation?” he demanded. “This is outrageous!”
“You never asked the nature of my work,” the scientist pointed out. “If you had, I would gladly have told you. I am studying human sexual arousal and climax.”
“But, but …” Elliot’s eyes bounced from Dr. Gregory to Miss Fortescue. “That’s indecent!” He yanked uselessly on the restraints binding his hands, wanting nothing more than to put Archie back into his trousers so the girl would stop looking at him.
“It certainly is not,” Elspeth said. “In this laboratory, we have put aside false modesty for the sake of science. See here, Mr. Brown, you took some interest in my pendant earlier.” She leaned forward to give him a better view of it and suppressed a smile. She knew very well that he’d been looking at her breasts earlier, not her pendant. Now the poor fellow did not know where to look.
“You can view the clock face on this side,” Elspeth said, “and on the other—” She turned the glass globe around. “—the inner workings of the clock are revealed. My father taught me that one must study the inner workings of a thing to understand it, and unfortunately, the sexual functions of men and women are not clearly understood, primarily because we are brought up to believe that it is indecent to discuss them. And yet, sexual functions are a natural and necessary part of life, so much so that life could not exist without them.”
Gregory gazed at his young laboratory assistant in a state of near rapture. He had not known that she understood his life’s work this deeply and could speak about it so passionately. If not for the Reminder, his member would have been ramrod straight. As it was, it pulsed against its metal confines.
Meanwhile, Mr. Brown seemed so befuddled, Gregory doubted he’d taken in half of what Miss Fortescue had said. Having seen this young man ogling her breasts while rubbing his penis on that bar, Gregory thought a more prosaic approach might help. “You signed a document saying that we could use your body for experimentation,” he said. “The body part we will primarily use is your penis, and what we will require of your penis is that it become aroused and progress to climax. This will happen on an almost daily basis, sometimes more than once.”
Elliot gaped at the man, trying to wrap his brain around what he was saying. Dr. Gregory wanted to pay him—pay him!—to rouse up Archie and release his pearly joy. Every day. Sometimes more than once. Now he understood the restraints for his hands. Clearly, Dr. Gregory was taking every precaution to prevent blindness in his subject. “Very well then,” Elliot said, making a show of reluctance that he no longer felt. “In the name of science, I suppose this will be acceptable.”
Gregory looked at the young man’s crotch. “We will need you erect.”
Elliot gritted his teeth. “I can’t simply demand it to become erect.” How was Archie supposed to do his duty while watched by this man and … and … His eyes moved involuntarily to Miss Fortescue.
“Perhaps I can be of assistance,” she said, unfastening two buttons at the base of her lacy collar. Elliot watched with astonishment as she undid two more buttons at her waist and removed the front of her bodice. Granted, there hadn’t been very much of it to start with, but now Elliot could see her corset, which cupped her naked breasts.
But she was not done. More buttons. More fabric pulled away … And then she was only wearing half a skirt. There was some sort of small, ruffly thing shielding her womanly region, but her legs were entirely exposed. He could see them from her booted heels, up her leather-bound calves, to the place above her knees where the boots ended and her thighs were left entirely bare. When she saw him staring, she put one boot up on the bench, giving him a better view.
Legs. His mother did not even allow him to say the word legs, and now here was one displayed before his very eyes.
“That seems to have done the trick,” Dr. Gregory said drily.
Elliot looked down. Archie was awake and bobbing around.
Gregory stepped backward. He was accustomed to being in charge of the experiments, but he sensed that his presence was off-putting for the young man, and they would get no use of him if he could not maintain his erection. “Miss Fortescue, will you take it from here?”
Their eyes met, and she nodded, understanding what he did not say—as she often did. “Yes, Dr. Gregory.”
Elliot couldn’t take his eyes off Miss Fortescue, fascinated by the way her breasts moved when she walked and the flash of white flesh between her boots and her short skirt. She said his name twice before he could drag his attention away from her body and properly look at the device she held in her hands.
It was a metal cylinder, about twelve inches long. A short length of rubber tubing protruded from one end and was attached to a closed glass vessel. The other end of the cylinder was fitted with some sort of rubber valve.
“Your penis goes in here,” Miss Fortescue explained, indicating the valve.
“What’s inside there?” he wanted to know.
“Something you’ll find pleasurable, I think,” she said, taking his penis in her free hand. Archie stiffened more at her touch, and Elliot asked no more questions. She guided him into the cylinder, the rubber valve sliding over his head. He gasped at the sensation, which was startlingly erotic, and then gasped again as the cylinder slid down Archie’s length. The metal chamber was filled, as far as he could tell, with some kind of warm, soft goo. Indeed, the substance oozed out the other end as Archie took its place, passing through the rubber tube and plopping into the glass vessel.
“Your penis is displacing the gel,” Miss Fortescue explained. “And by measuring its volume, we can determine the girth of your erection at its maximum size. We will see if it grows bigger during the procedure because more gel will be pushed out. Oh, exactly like that! Well done!” Another big blob of the substance had landed in the glass vessel. “Since your hands are restrained, I will hold the device in place for you. Oh, and I almost forgot.”
She flipped a switch on the side of the cylinder, and it began to vibrate. This churned the gel inside the chamber, causing it to swoosh and swirl around Archie.
“Enjoy,” she said.
Elliot couldn’t speak. His mouth hung open, and his breath
came in little gasps.
“When you ejaculate—” Miss Fortescue paused and looked up at Dr. Gregory. “How will we differentiate between the volume of the ejaculate and any increase in erection size at the very end?”
Gregory smiled at the young woman fondly. She was such a thorough-thinking assistant. “We will be able to separate his ejaculatory fluids from the gel by centrifuge and discover its precise volume that way.”
“Oh, that is clever.”
Their words were little more than a muddle in Elliot’s head. The churning gel massaged him, teased him, tormented him. More of it squeezed through the tube as Archie expanded. Elliot wished he could see the size for himself, but since he could not, he looked at Miss Fortescue instead.
It seemed impossible that this radiant, delectable young woman was crouched beside him with those leather cuffs and tall boots, her breasts and thighs exposed. Her right breast even brushed against his leg as she leaned over him, holding the cylinder in place. Elliot wanted desperately to touch that breast and silently cursed that his hands were restrained.
She was like a wild, heathen pirate girl. She looked … wanton. That was the word his addled brain was seeking. Wanton. According to his chums, wanton women did wicked things in bed. Elliot pictured doing those things with Miss Fortescue. In reality, the things he pictured weren’t very wanton or wicked, as Elliot was a sheltered young man and lacking in imagination. Still it was enough to send Archie over the edge.
Throwing his head back, Elliot cried, “My Critical Period is upon me!”
Gregory and Elspeth exchanged glances. Elspeth pressed the fingers of her free hand against her lips to keep from laughing.
Elliot did not notice their amusement. Shock waves rippled through his abdomen, his testicles, and, of course, Archie. Gel squirted through the tubing, along with a thinner substance that Elliot knew was his own pearly joy. He rooted Archie on, wanting to make a good showing, and the old boy didn’t let him down. His Critical Period went on and on. He could feel himself still spurting even after gel stopped coming through the tube as his erection diminished.