Fever

“God, he was big. Christ, he was huge. Fuck, he was punishing me.” The mantra kept running through my mind. And I wasn’t just talking about Jomata Nyoni’s height, breadth, and belly. I’d been told that he was called the Man Splitter in Uganda when he was working his evil as one of Idi Amin’s enforcers, but that was about his work with an ax. Nobody had told me he was horse hung. I gasped and groaned again as he lifted my body until just his bulb was inside me and then slammed me down on his shaft again, going deep. If the water of the Mediterranean hadn’t been up above our waists, which took a lot of the force out of his power slams, I don’t think I could have handled it. He was as cruel at cocking as his reputation said he had been as a Ugandan thug.

I wasn’t left with any doubt about being disposable in his eyes.

We were in the water, beyond where the waves broke on the beach. He was crouched down, taking the weight of my body on his thighs, facing the private beach below the villa on the French Riviera, not far from the border of Monaco. Nyoni had exiled himself here no doubt within escape distance to the principality should he get wind that France was going to get around to extraditing him back to Uganda to face war crimes trials. He’d managed to stay on the run but in the lap of luxury for thirty-five years, more than half his lifetime.

My legs were spread, my thighs resting on his massive ones. He was gripping and spreading my butt cheeks in his beefy hands, which he was using to lift me and slam me down on his cock. The man was twice as big as I was—and I’m not a small man—and three times more physically powerful. I clutched his bulging biceps in my hands. The Mediterranean rose and fell behind him, but not in my view. My view was of a broad, beefy, both fat and muscular torso, with native tattooing and the tattooing of more than one bullet scar and several knife slashings.

He’d obviously had a rough life. He was making my life rough now. I cried again in pain as he lifted me and slammed me down on the cock, reaching deep into my core, where I was still soft and rarely tested. Much more of this and he’d do damage, not that he cared if he did damage. Man Splitter, I thought. Man Splitter! I took one of my hands off a bicep, leaving it to him to keep me in place in front of and facing him with the strength of his hands. I managed to snake the hand between where our thighs met our groins, get hold of his ball sack, and roll and squeeze his balls.

With a roar, he creamed me deep when he slammed me down again. I had had to do it; it was a matter of self-preservation. He pushed me off him into a wave rolling past us, turned his body, dove into the water, and started to swim laps with strong, Australian-crawl strokes parallel to the beach.

When I was able to stop shuddering and trembling, I turned and struggled through the churning water back to the beach. As I walked out of the surf, I checked to ensure that Nyoni’s two Ugandan bodyguards, Mulumba and Kato, were still stationed at the top of the wooden staircase going up to the stone terrace of the villa. They were, and they had their eyes glued on me, no doubt grinning behind their sunglasses. Younger by decades than Nyoni, they were both black bull musclemen—stereotyped bodyguard thugs. They also both had had me already and were certain, I’m sure, that they would have me again.

They had both fucked me the previous night and no doubt planned to be given the same privilege tonight, assuming I’d still be around then. I had hooked up with Nyoni in the casino in Monaco the previous night. We’d been playing at the same table, and we were both losing. But to him losing wasn’t nearly as painful as I was showing my losing was. When I’d gone bust, he volunteered to stake me again.

“Why? Why would I let you do that? Why would you want to do it?” I’d asked. I knew why. He’d been signaling for more than an hour.

“Because I want to fuck you,” he’d said, baldly stating his intent. “Your ass for these blue chips.”

“That’s OK,” I’d said, “Thanks for the offer, but I think it’s time for me to pack it in for the night anyway.”

“Don’t tell me that men don’t buy you and fuck you,” he said. “I saw you come into the casino with Count Orsini. I know he pays for it. I want to fuck you.”

“We’ll see if I see you in here tomorrow night,” I’d said. “I think I’m a little scared of you.”

“Good,” he said. “You have reason to be afraid of what I’ll put in you. But fear will make it more interesting for both of us when I fuck you.”

“You certainly don’t mince words, to you?” I said, trying to sound neutral, and stood up from the table.

I went to the men’s room and when I came back, he was gone, as were the two goons who had stood behind him while we’d played the table.

I’d gotten no more than twenty yards from the casino when a big honking black Land Rover pulled up beside me and strong arms pulled me inside. Nyoni fucked me on the backseat while they were driving back to his villa. I struggled a bit just to establish that this wasn’t by my choice, but he was much too heavy and strong for me, getting on top of me across the backseat and between my parted legs, stunning me with a backhand across the face, getting my trousers off and his fly open and then one of my ankles trapped in a strap above the column between the seats. I knew he had reinforcements he could call on from the front seat, but he didn’t need them. His hand was covering my mouth and nose, controlling my oxygen supply until he was inside me, at which time there wasn’t much use to struggle anymore and I collapsed under him and took the cock hard and deep in surrender, completely open to him. I even murmured how filling he was as he got going good. I think I mentioned a “Yes, yes,” and “Fuck me” from time to time and clutched at his shoulder blades as symbolic of my complicity once he was inside me to help him decide I wasn’t immediately disposable, and I moved my pelvis and sighed for him to work on his vanity.

He was a serious cocksman even in the back of a Land Rover, putting a lot of motion into his hips and buttocks and taking me with long, strong strokes. He obviously had done this a lot before—even the snatching aspect of it, I’ll bet. “Man Splitter” couldn’t help but come to my mind. The thug at the wheel spent more time looking at us through the rear-view mirror than watching the road, and the other bodyguard unabashedly turned in his seat and watched. He had been the one to trap my ankle in the overhead strap.

Once there, at his seaside villa, Nyoni let Mulumba fuck me in the backseat as well. I was too exhausted to do more than lay on my back, moaning, with my legs parted, and let the black bull muscleman do pushups on my ass. Nyoni fucked me on his bed and then Kato fucked me in the bathroom off the bedroom they took me to, nailing me over the toilet, with my hands and cheek pressed into the tiles behind the toilet tank. To keep them from having any terminal ideas, I took the follow-up fucks with a modest amount of enthusiasm, complimenting each on being high on the proficiency and equipment scale of my experience with johns. It wasn’t a lie. All three of them were hung bulls and all three were cruel cocksmen, leaving every impression that they fucked for keeps. Everything was hunky-dory, of course. I had confessed to being a rent-boy for hire and Nyoni filled my wallet with money before they fucked me. Of course there was little question at the time that they were going to fuck me regardless.

It was a good thing that other men had fucked me, or the three of them would have killed me with their cocks. Nyoni remarked that he’d known I was a rent-boy when he’d first seen me—as if that was license for the three of them to fuck me nonstop.

Even then, though, I had the feeling that wherever they took me and whatever they did to me, they wouldn’t be returning me and I wouldn’t be enjoying the money Nyoni paid me. Once a lawless, unchecked thug, always a lawless, unchecked thug, and in their eyes I was just a diversion, a disposable rent-boy. I had to make it painful for them to do without me.

And here we were on the beach.

I went over to the towels stretched out on the sand, slipping on the Speedo I’d found in the room they assigned me to before I went down on my back. The Speedo was much too small for any of them, so obviously I wasn’t the first young man they’d brought in to do this to. The Speedo was a tight fit on me as well, so it had belonged to someone smaller than me—someone who didn’t take it with him when he left, no matter how he left here. I didn’t get much of the sun, and the Speedo was off nearly as soon as I had pulled it on my legs. I felt the disappearance of the warmth of the sun and opened my eyes. Kato was looming between me and the sun, and he was reaching down and pulling the Speedo off my legs. When I saw him standing over me, I also saw that he was naked and in massive erection.

“Come and get me, big boy,” I muttered, in reality-based surrender before he lowered himself on me and I spread my legs for him. The expression on his face told me there wasn’t anything wrong with his English comprehension.

He came down on top of me. I tried to rise, but he backhanded me, and, with a sigh of resignation, I lay back, bent my spread legs, placing my feet on the sand on either side of the blanket, and raised my pelvis to give him a straight shot and thereby save some wear and tear on my ass. When he’d slapped me, I knew he meant business and no playing around. “No, thanks” was not an option.

I arched my back and gave a little gasp as he slid inside me. He ran his arm under my waist and pulled me up to connect with him at our pelvises where he knelt between my legs. I let my torso recline back, with my cheek and shoulder blades on the towel. I went limp and extended my arms straight out from my body in total submission, letting him take what he wanted, concentrating on opening my channel to the hard, fat cock inside me and taking enjoyment from that. “Yes, yes, fuck me. Give it all to me,” I murmured. I needed him to believe I wanted him. I at least half believed that myself. I almost imperceptibly set my hips in motion, a subtle meeting of his thrusts, pulling him deeper inside me, and a bit more of his cock coming to the surface when I joined him in pulling back before the next thrust. Very subtle, but his cock knew to interpret this as a “yes, I’m with you; I want this.”

I’d had his measure and technique already and had been able to handle it. I knew there was no fighting him, and I pretended that his slap had dazed me more that it had. What it certainly had done was to remind me what value this men put on my life and well-being. I needed him to value my ass and to dull any consideration he might have that I wanted to be anywhere but here, sheathing the cocks of the three of them.

Nyoni had just fucked me, was thicker than Kato was, and had liberally lubed my channel with his cum, so I required no preparation. I needed them to believe that I was here because I didn’t mind being fucked—I enjoyed it. And I enjoyed it particularly from a muscular black bull. As his thrusts grew more vigorous, I clutched his bulbous butt cheeks and helped guide him inside me. I cried out in passion somewhat more than I felt when he ejaculated inside me, and I held him to me, clutching his buttocks, until every twitch of his cock and dribble of his cum had been drained from him. His postcoital kiss told me that I had convinced him that I had wanted him inside me.

When Kato was finished, there was Mulumba, taking his privileges doggie style and adding his cum to that of Nyoni and Kato.

These men were bored and randy. They were using me up quickly. And they were murderous thugs. I had no illusions about where they meant this to be heading.

Still, I didn’t panic. When Mulumba was finished with me and the two had returned to their station, I checked what I had brought down to the beach with me and then lay back, not bothering to put the Speedo back on, and waited. I could see that Nyoni was still swimming laps from one end of the property’s imaginary boundary out to sea to the other. But his strokes were slowing down and it was taking him longer to cover the distance. I knew this would tire him enough to bring him out of the sea. He would want me when he came out of the water again, and he would have saved the strength to have me. The way these men were working me, I knew this was a day’s dalliance and not much more. I was afraid that Nyoni had sniffed the air and was deciding to move on to some other place that would drag its feet on expediting him. He’d been successfully doing that for over three decades.

I knew what that meant for me.

I had nearly dozed off, when I felt his hands grip my ankles and jackknife my legs up, over my shoulders, rolling my pelvis up. Nyoni knelt below me and was slurping on my asshole with his tongue. I couldn’t help but arch my back and moan. He was very good—experienced—at this work. He was a good cocksman too, if one didn’t take into account how rough and uncaring he was—and how obese he was. The man must have weighed over three hundred pounds, all of which came down on top of me when he pulled my legs back down, wishboned them, and settled on top of me between them. He fingered my ass and sucked on my nipples for a couple of minutes but then went right to business, thrusting inside me, deep, and pumping hard and fast inside me.

I could hardly believe that he had been swimming vigorous laps in the sea for three-quarters of hours. His stroking was long, hard, and deep. And if he hadn’t been crushing me with his weight, I would have enjoyed the cocking, even while worrying at how close he was coming to shredding my channel or reaching unexplored, tender territory. He had much more experience and stamina than either one of his bodyguards. He churned inside me in the vulnerable, soft area that few other men had reached and right then, for those fifteen minutes, I was lost to him—panting, moaning, groaning, whispering, “Yes, yes, fuck me. Like that. Oh, God, I love it deep like that. You’re fucking me at my core.” And he was fucking me at my core. My passage walls began to shimmer and the muscles of the walls began to undulate over his cock. I only did this for men I was lost to. And for now, right here and now, I was lost to this man crushing my body. This big, black, mastering bull.

Taking my cock in my hand as he pounded my ass, I took care of myself. I exploded again and again and again at the punishment of his cock deep inside me. When he was done, my balls ached from what had been pulled out of them—how totally they had been drained.

Soon thereafter, he snorted, ejaculated, rolled off me onto his back on the towel next to mine and was asleep and snoring within seconds.

I gave him twenty minutes of rest—me needing the rest more than he did, I’m sure—before I turned to him, worked my lips down the great curve of his stomach, into his unruly bush, and took his now-flaccid sausage of a cock in my mouth. It didn’t remain flaccid for long, and he woke with another snort and a surprised look on his face. I hadn’t initiated anything before now. When any of them had wanted to fuck me, they just did. I had laid there for it, but I hadn’t initiated any of it. I certainly hadn’t awakened any of them by giving them head.

Giving a groan, he ran his beefy hands into the blond curls of my hair and pulled my head on and off his cock, making me take it deeper than I had been doing, making me take it deeper than I really could accommodate. But I stuck with him, gagging, but persevering until his dick was filled out and throbbing.

Then I started kissing my way back up his body. He didn’t object when I straddled his pelvis with my knees, moved a hand behind me, grasped his cock, positioned it at my hole, and descended on it. At first he asserted control, slamming me up and down on the cock, but eventually he relaxed, put his arms behind his head to serve as a pillow, closed his eyes, and let me do the work. He purred as I moved forward and back on the cock rather than up and down on it, bringing him whole new sensations of rubbing against my passage walls.

When I felt that he was tensing and ready to blow again, I moved my hand to under my towel in the sand, and, with an eye to the bodyguards at the top of the stairs, who looked bored and in a half doze, stealthily pulled out the stiletto blade I’d had secreted in a seam of a calf of my trousers since the previous night and managed to bring down to the beach woven into the underside of the towel. At his ejaculation, and his exclamation of having shot another wad, I slipped the blade between two of his ribs in a way that a surgeon would know was the quickest way to his heart. He gave me a look of utter surprise. I pulled the blade out and slipped it in again just a fraction of an inch from where I had put it the first time—just to be sure.

I was sure. His eyes glazed. Luckily he hadn’t made any more noise than he would make with an excellent ejaculation. There wasn’t much difference between his death rattle and the gravely sound he had made deep in his chest when his cock was pleased. His cock had been pleased a lot when he was fucking me. I wiped the stiletto down with the edge of my towel and buried it deep in the sand. Then I leaned over, closed his eyes with a brush of my hand, rose, brushed the sand off my body in a leisurely movement, and pulled my Speedo back on.

At the top of the stairs, I informed Mulumba and Kato that Nyoni had told me to go back into the house and that he was sleeping and was not to be disturbed. There was little question they would remain with Nyoni and that they wouldn’t be smart and split up—as then one would try to claim favoritism with the erstwhile general. I walked into the back of the house and then, after a momentary stop in the room I’d been assigned to retrieve my trousers, tux shirt, socks, shoes, and bulging wallet, walked straight out the front and up to the road. I had opened the gates on the road from inside the house, hoping and assuming that the sound of the surf would cover the low pinging noise of the alarm.

The small Fiat 500 was parked on the side of the road three properties down, with the keys in the ignition. I was well into the interior of France, I’m sure, before either Mulumba or Kato attempted to awaken the Ugandan Man Splitter they assumed was asleep.

My ass was sore as hell.

* * * *

Twenty miles down the road, I stopped in a shopping center parking lot between two towering SUVs with smoked windows, pulled out my wallet, and counted the money. It was quite a wad. Of course, it had only been for show. They hadn’t planned on me leaving with it. Nonetheless I’d keep it and not report it. I figured that I had more than earned it.

This hadn’t been Plan A. I was supposed to somehow get Nyoni alone in the casino and off him there. But, luckily, the possibility that I might be taken back to his villa before I could do that had also been planned for. Sending in anyone to help hadn’t been in any plan that I knew of.

I pulled a burner cell phone out of the glove compartment and rang a number I knew by heart.

“It’s done,” I said when the man came on the other end. No names, no more detail at this point. As long as Nyoni was dead, the man I was speaking to didn’t care about the details or how hard it was to get there.

“Can you get to Nice? The flat there.”

“Piece of cake. Will you be there?”

“No.”

I paused, disappointed. The man wasn’t only my contact and handler; he was my lover. After something like this I needed attention—different attention than the Ugandan thugs had given me.

“You’re needed.”

“So soon?” I asked. “Usually there’s cool-down time.” And there usually was, for several reasons. The work was nerve-racking and required some recovery time, and assurances had to be made that there wouldn’t be any repercussions or connections established through same.

“It has to be you. The call was urgent. You’re a doctor. The cover requires a doctor.”

“Here in France?”

“No. Africa. You’ll be briefed in Nice.”

“I don’t know. It’s pretty soon. This one was rougher than I thought it would be.”

“It involves Doctor Christophe Colbert of Doctors Across Borders. You can get closest fastest.”

I sucked in breath. A former lover. One who had made my walls shimmer and the muscles ripple. One of the few who had reached me and made love to me in my most vulnerable, soft core. One marked by a bad breakup.

“I hear you,” I answered. No use trying to argue my way out of it. “Until we meet again then.”

“And an Irish blessing to you too.”

“You’re not Irish.”

The man clicked off. That was outside of protocol. No useful information was to be given over such connections. But he had mentioned Chris. He’d broken protocol first. He wouldn’t be more pissed than I was. And it wasn’t his ass that burned.

I stopped outside of Nice at an expensive male brothel I knew of and bought a rent-boy of my own for a couple of hours, using some of the money Nyoni had stuffed in my wallet. I picked out a big-cocked and body-builder muscular Spanish sailor I was told worked there part time when his ship was in port. I paid him extra to make love to me, not just to fuck me.

He lay between my legs, with me clutching his butt cheeks with my hands and rubbing the backs of his meaty thighs with the heels of my feet while he languidly plowed me and French kissed me. I used him until he too, with length more than capable of the trip, was able to reach to my vulnerable, soft core until the muscles of my passage were undulating over and caressing his thick cock shaft and making me hum and purr. He did me well, getting deep into my core and spreading and kissing my walls there with his bulb. I came twice in great, arcing globs of multishot cum. After Nyoni and his thugs, I needed someone to make love to me. He claimed it was his pleasure and that someone like me shouldn’t have to pay for it. But he took my money all the same—and gave me his private cell number.

On the way out, the manager of the house admitted he had been watching and offered me a place in his stable. “You’re American, aren’t you? And such a good body. Natural blonds do very well here. Your performance, when he was deep inside you, was very impressive. Your exhibition of totally open submissiveness and surrender would win you large tips. It made me shoot my load. If you came to work here, I’d pay for you to bottom for me myself.”

I told him thanks, but I already had a job that fucked with me more than enough.

* * * *

“I didn’t, in a million years, think I’d see you out in a bush like this, Wade. If anyone is the Manhattan sort of person, it’s—”

“Is that why you’re out here, Chris? To avoid me?”

“Man, you get right to it, don’t you?” he asked. We were standing in the baggage arrivals area of the airport in Bamako, Mali. Christophe Colbert still looked good to me—tall, slender, very French, meaning he couldn’t not look sexy no matter what he was wearing or how scruffy he was. He wasn’t scruffy at all at the moment. He looked like he had dressed as carefully as he could to make me want him. I didn’t want to want him, but of course I did. He had aged a bit since he’d walked away from me in Manhattan, but the slight graying at his temple looked great on him. Of course it would. Standing next to him, was a shorter, muscular, and very interesting-looking-in-his-own-right young black man, who had been introduced to me as Assane, the driver.

“I don’t want us to act like it didn’t happen, Chris,” I said. “But I don’t want you to think I’ve come out here chasing you. The clinic at Kongoba is down a doctor; this fever business is approaching dangerous levels, I hear; Doctors Across Borders is paying well; and I was available. I didn’t even know you were here before I signed up. So, where to from here?”

“It’s too late in the day to go to the clinic,” Chris answered. “And the roads around here aren’t safe at night. There’s been some local revolutionary activity and the French army has come in to give support. The revolutionaries are particularly unhappy about that. Tonight we stay here in Bamako—at Le Grand Hotel. We’ll go to the clinic in the morning.”

My bags came up on the carousel, Assane hefted them with a winsome grin, and we followed him out to the parking lot, to a yellow Toyota FJ Cruiser so covered in mud that I had to remark where that, rather than dust, was be found in the Mali scrub.

“Kongoba is in marshy area,” Chris answered, “near the banks of the Niger River.” Assane just wagged his head and smiled in agreement. He was becoming easy to like, and the way Chris put his hands on the young man as we moved out to the vehicle gave me the strong impression that the randy Frenchman—I’d always found him randy—had found Assane quite easy to like—and to obtain—as well. That had been the problem between us. Chris was a magnet for men happy with a one-night stand and had thought I wanted more commitment than he was willing to give. I hadn’t necessarily wanted more commitment. I’d wanted a little more consideration, though. He’d wanted to bring other men into our bed, and I wasn’t ready for that at the time. I’d grown to like it occasionally, but not until after he’d moved on.

Assane wasn’t there, in the hotel dining room, where Christophe and I had reached the dessert and coffee course with just occasional chit chat that was avoidance nonsense, not dealing either with Chris or me. The conversation hadn’t focused on the work of the Doctors Across Borders clinic in the bush here in Mali, either, or certainly, what had brought me here, both why Christophe thought I was here and why I really was here. Assane’s absence, though, with a Mali native of his station not being welcome in the dining room of a hotel with Le Grand’s history, gave me the opening to delve deeper.

“Is there a problem between you and Assane that he couldn’t join us for dinner?” I asked. “I haven’t known you to be color conscious before.”

“No, certainly no problem with Assane. It’s more Mali, and Assane is a man of Mali. Malians have and accept their traditional roles. The Le Grand Hotel is the height of colonial tradition. If we hadn’t paid for the meal in our hotel package, I wouldn’t have hesitated to include him at another restaurant, but he might have been shy with you there until he’d gotten acquainted with you. I, of course, told him what a grand, democratic guy you are, but he’ll want to learn that for himself.”

“You’ve told him about me? Have you told him we once were lovers?”

“No, of course not,” Christophe said, with a snort and a laugh. He looked around the dining room to see whether anyone might have heard that. Two attentive waiters—both black Malians—were standing close enough to hear, but they remained stone faced. I didn’t really give a fuck if they heard me. I was in the mood to give a few slashes to Christophe’s smug, carefree shell. But he surprised me.

“And why would he care if we were? He’s a submissive bottom and so are you,” he countered.

It was my turn to glance at the waiters to see if they were following our conversation—and, I guess, for Christophe to assert that I couldn’t embarrass him that easily.

“Are you fucking Assane?” I asked.

“Again, why should you care? You and Assane are both bottoms. But, yes, of course, I’m fucking Assane. You can see for yourself that he’s irresistible.”

“Are you afraid for Assane?” I asked, twisting the knife in a different direction.

“What do you mean?”

“We have to discuss this eventually, Chris. The clinic isn’t just short a doctor. You are in the edge of an epidemic. The Doctors Across Borders are very concerned. A fever that takes otherwise fit native black men within twenty-four hours with no apparent way to save them. And rumors have reached the organization’s headquarters in New York that the clinic is responsible for that rather than helping to prevent it. They want me to look into this and give them an independent report. But Assane, who is, I presume, working at the clinic where these men are brought is of the Fila tribe, if my observations are correct. Isn’t it just the young men of this tribe who are being affected by this fever?”

The elegance of this explanation for why I was here was that it was, on the surface, true, while my deeper assignment was to put a stop to it if, as the rumors had it, there was experimentation going on here by a rogue doctor to develop a virus that induced such a fever. And, further, I was to consider Christophe Colbert as possibly being that doctor—or exonerate him from that possibility.

“Yes, it’s only Fila tribals who have been affected yet. And, yes, you are right. Assane is of the Fila tribe. But we are careful with our precautions at the clinic. I’m not that worried for Assane.”

That didn’t make me feel good about Christophe. If there was some sort of pogrom in the works on young, military- and procreating-age members of the Fila tribe, with the Fila including some twenty million people spread over much of Africa, why wasn’t Christophe more worried for a young man who he admitted was his lover? One explanation—a hideous one—was that Christophe controlled who got infected and who didn’t.

“Most of the Mali staff at the clinic are from the Mandinka tribe—the particularly tall tribal men you see winning foot races—and the fever hasn’t shown in them. Yet.” Christophe obviously didn’t want to talk about Assane anymore in this context.

“Is there still a Father Felix in Kongoba, at a Catholic mission near the clinic?” I asked, changing the subject—and doing it purposely to see Christophe’s unguarded reaction to the question. He did seem to be surprised by the question, but he quickly withdrew into his aura of self-confidence.

“Yes, Felix is still at the mission school. How do you know him and why do you ask?”

“I don’t know him. But Doctors Across Borders wants me to consult with him. They want me to ask some questions of someone not connected with the clinic. Apparently he made quite a fuss when one of the Fila tribesmen who worked at the mission school became one of the fever victims. He is suggesting that a doctor at the clinic gave the young man the fever.”

“Ah, that would have been Yossibo. Yes, he died of the fever. And, yes, Felix was upset about that. Felix was fucking him. I’m not so sure that Father Felix is a reliable source. American Catholic priests don’t get assigned to outposts like this if they are all that trusted. But if you wish to meet him, I’ll be happy to introduce you to him. He had only just acquired a taste for Malian blacks with Yossibo. Before that—before the other American priest who was at the mission was suddenly reassigned—Felix had preferred pretty-boy white blonds. Like you, as a matter of fact.”

He smiled at me what I recognized as his victory smile. He’d known I was trying to prick him—that we were bantering in a realm of hurt feelings. And he knew that I hadn’t gotten through his protective veneer.

I called it a night.

“Assane is waiting for us at a club not far down the road,” Christophe said as he folded his napkin and placed it on the table. One of the attentive waiters, recognizing the “I’m finished here” signal stepped forward immediately to clear his coffee cup and cheesecake plate. I also caught a smile from the waiter and a brush of Christophe’s hand that clearly signaled the young man had heard our conversation and was interested in Christophe. I wasn’t surprised. Christophe exuded sensuality for any man who wished to lay under another man. And the waiter was signaling availability—even without knowing what I knew about Christophe.

“You go on without me,” I said. “It was a long flight from Paris, and I got no sleep. There was an Italian civil engineer beside me who kept hitting on me and I was afraid to even close my eyes.” That was the truth, even though I wasn’t as tired as I was making out. The Italian businessman also was very alluring. He had scared the hell out of me, though, by some of his suggestive talk of what he liked to do with his fist.

Truth be known, I didn’t want to fall into an old groove with Christophe—and certainly not until I had cleared him of any involvement in nefarious activities with this fever business. I would do what I had to do if I found something sinister in all that. I didn’t want it to be hard to do if I found Christophe was involved.

I went to my room; took a shower; covered myself, otherwise naked, in a hotel robe; and read a bit in an Alan Furst thriller on the Spanish Civil War that I’d bought to read on the plane. Restless, I rose from the bed and went to the window. My room overlooked the front entrance of the hotel, and I can’t be surprised that I caught sight of Christophe leaving the hotel—nearly an hour after he’s suggested we meet with Assane in a nightclub. Nearly plastered to him was the waiter who had signaled to Christophe at dinner. They parted, but not without a hug and a feel.

I supposed Christophe would go on to the club to meet Assane and later that night he’d be fucking Assane in a back room of the club, perhaps with a third man. That was the Christophe I remembered. It was the Christophe who could have multiple men in a night—both sequentially and together.

Neither was I surprised three hours later, when, after having returned to my novel after a doze on the bed, I heard the sound of slurred voices in the hall—two men—and opened my door a crack to see Christophe and Assane entering Christophe’s room across the hall from mine.

Then too, a few hours later, having lost track of the time because I had drifted off to sleep on the bed again, I answered the knock on my door to find Christophe there, wearing a sloppy grin and a hotel robe of his own—obviously as naked under it as I was when I opened the door.

He fucked me to a swift mutual ejaculation, with me on my back at the foot of the bed, raising and spreading my legs as wide as I could to provide as open a channel for him to reach deep inside me with his impossibly long cock—the distinguishing feature of his that I supposed the dining room waiter now knew about. Christophe could reach deepest into the quick of me of any man I’d ever had. It’s why I stuck with him as long as I did in New York and why he left me rather than me leaving him, even though all of the infidelity had been on his side. It’s why I had let him in my room tonight.

After a swift fuck to establish that I would let him in again, he pulled me up onto the bed and into his chest, my buttocks nestled in his crotch. I looked up, the glass cylinder of the syringe having caught the light from the lamp on the nightstand and murmured, “No, Chris. I haven’t done that shit since you—”

“Shush,” he whispered. “You know it gives you a high from the fuck like nothing else can.”

I whimpered as he found a vein in the crook of my arm, but I didn’t fight him. We were doctors; we’d always been able to control this shit. And he was right. I’d never been higher than the combination of him and this shit.

He pushed my bent left leg up into my belly, entered me in a side split and, while embracing me close, sank into the quick of me and played my vulnerable inner core like a violin for some twenty minutes or more, as I danced on the clouds, before he creamed me again. To me he was a foot long and baseball thick now, as I groaned, moaned, and sighed for him. And he was Superman too. Fucking and seeding me repeatedly. Exhausted, I drifted off into sleep, and this time I didn’t wake until daylight was streaming in my window.

When I woke and was coming out of the cloud-dance haze, it was to Christophe lying on his back in the center of the bed, embracing and turning me to him with an arm around my back and fingers playing with one of my nipples. We were kissing, and thus it took a few moments for me to realize that Assane was straddling Christophe’s hips and was riding the Frenchman’s cock and had a hand encasing mine. I, of course, was hard. What was happening had some relationship to the wet dream I had been having and as I came to I came for Assane. When I realized that, I bounded out of the bed, escaped to the bathroom, locked the door, and stood under the shower until I was able to stop seething. They were both gone when I came out of the bathroom.

I seethed all the way to the clinic in the yellow Toyota off-road vehicle, not being able to see Assane’s expression at all, as he was in the driver’s seat, but clearly being able to see that Christophe, riding in the passenger seat, was buoyant and in the best of spirits.

At one point Christophe smiled at me, with his head turned to the backseat where I was sulking, and said. “You fucked him too, you know. We had a good old time, Assane, you, and I.”

I answered, “Just shut the fuck up,” and he turned eyes forward again, with a laugh.

* * * *

I wondered why, having built a state-of-the-art clinic, albeit with mud brick outer walls, the Kongoba clinic staff was still living in tents circling a campfire—at least I wondered that until that first night, after dark, when I realized they kept the tents for atmospherics. They were large tents and electricity had been run to them. There was a brick structure at the side that enclosed a functional kitchen, a lounge, and a dining room, but as soon as supper was over, and the sun had gone down, we all were pulled out to sit around an open fire within the circle of tents. Smoldering smudge pots circling the area helped keep the mosquitoes and other night creatures at bay.

Despite the electricity, the tents were lit by candlelight, and the canvas was transparent enough to see distinct shadows of those moving around inside. I was to learn that wasn’t by mistake. We were entertained by a series of sensual shadow plays.

I also was to learn that after the doctors, nurses, and orderlies had worked hard through the day, they partied hard at night—and this included liquor and drugs.

The staff wasn’t shy around me. They had immediately accepted me as a competent doctor and thrown me at the patients with as much alacrity as they took in taking on work themselves. And there was plenty of work to do. In addition to the usual patients walking long miles to show up to a free clinic, the infirmary was filled to overflowing. The fever epidemic was taxing our limits. I was not spared doing what little was possible for the fever patients, all young, male Fila tribesmen. All who had come in before the doctors arrived in the morning had died before we went back to the camp that night. I willingly worked with these men, giving them comfort to the end and trying my best to figure out what was taking them away, and I thought I had gotten an inkling of something. All of the ones I helped into the other world had drug mark tracks on their arms, but none had been users for very long. But then I found that they were being given morphine by injection to ease the pain that went with the fever.

It was little wonder that the staff came back to the camp wanting to forget and to live life to the fullest. In addition to me, there were three doctors: Christophe, the Frenchman; Gafar al-Saadi, a Saudi, and the senior doctor; and Gretta Schmidt, a German female. There was an Australian male nurse, Ken Kelso, who also lived in the staff area. The other nurses were Mali women who lived in their villages with their families. There were two men of the “big men” Mandinka tribe, Moussa and Baba, who worked as orderlies in the clinic and were in the camp after supper, although they didn’t seem to have tents of their own. They were handsome giants, each closer to seven feet tall than six, both with well-developed bodies, wearing only shorts that evening, and both obviously bull hung given the bulges at their crotches. Two Fila tribesman also stayed on past supper: the driver, Assane, and a cook, Ahmad. Assane, as I’d already learned, was a sexy young man. Ahmad was a grizzled senior, although still with good muscle tone.

The staff certainly didn’t tone down their idea of entertainment because a new doctor was there. It was clear to me from the beginning that Christophe—and possibly Assane as well—had let them all know I was a player. Christophe made no bones with them that he’d had me—and that he was happy to share me.

Soon after we settled in the canvas chairs around the campfire, and someone had cranked up the gramophone to produce crooner—both male and female—background music, the staff began to unwind. Julie London was singing “Cry Me a River” when I saw that Dr. al-Saadi had taken Assane into one of the backlit tents. I clearly saw, by their shadows, Al-Saadi shoot Assane up with a syringe, Assane kneel in front of Al-Saadi and suck his dick, and Al-Saadi fuck Assane on a bed, with Assane playing the crab, hovering over Al-Saadi’s body, facing up at the ceiling of the tent, arms and legs holding him over Al-Saadi’s body, while the Saudi held Assane’s waist and raised and lowered the young Fila tribesman on his cock.

I could see Christophe watching the tent with some irritation, but as the cook, Ahmad, was kneeling between Christophe’s spread legs as he sat in the canvas chair at one side of me, and, with Christophe guiding the cook’s woolly head as Ahmad gave him a prolonged blow job, Christophe hardly had room to complain.

Lines of cocaine had been laid out on a low table by the fire. Christophe had already taken a line. So had I, and so had Ken Kelso, a burly redhead, who sat in the canvas chair on the other side of me and was flirting with me.

Gretta Schmidt, blonde, petite, top heavy, and the other side of forty, sat cross-legged at the table and was taking lines of the cocaine. Squatting behind her, the giant Mandinka orderly, Moussa, was embracing her from behind. He opened her blouse and cupped and squeezed her ample breasts. Intent on the white powder on the table in front of her, Gretta didn’t seem to notice and certainly not to mind. I knew he was going to fuck her and she was going to welcome him. I couldn’t imagine how a small woman like her was going to be able to take the cock of a man the size of him, though. Not very far into the night, though, he had carried her into one of the tents and was doing just that, giving quite a shadow play. She was on top of him, riding a huge cock that came almost all out of her before she squatted and took it all again. It was clear he would have crushed her if he’d been on top.

Baba, the other Mandinka, was mixing and distributing drinks—that is until I’d gone off to the separate bathroom facilities. On the way back, where I was in sight of the center fire pit area and of Al-Saadi fucking Assane in one tent, Moussa fucking Schmidt in another tent, Ahmad sucking Christophe’s cock, and Kelso kneeling down at the table now, snorting another line of coke, Baba grabbed me from behind and pressed me into the trunk of an umbrella tree.

Why not, I thought, as I arched my back, jutted my buttocks into his crotch in blatant invitation, and moved my arm back to where, when I extended it as much as I could, I could cup the back of his neck and bring his face down far enough for us to kiss. I almost found out why that wasn’t a good idea, though. He fucked me, standing, from the rear, with what might have been a foot of cock. I hadn’t been mined that deep since the night before, by Christophe, and I sensed that Baba didn’t have it all inside me.

After stopping at the table for a snort when Baba was done with me, I hobbled, bowlegged, to my canvas chair between Christophe and Kelso. Both had been waiting for me. Ahmad was gone. As I sat in the chair, both men turned their faces toward me for three-way kisses, and both put a hand on my cock and started to stroke.

My head was spinning, and I remember saying that I needed a breather and standing up from the chair and brushing their hands off. Then I remember being in one of the tents, and I remember Christophe holding up a syringe. After that, I remember sitting in Christophe’s lap, facing him, as he sat on the side of a bed. I was gripping his shoulder blades and, for some reason laughing and babbling to him about all the pretty colors. He was cupping my buttocks in his hands and pulling me in to him. His cock was entering my soft, vulnerable zone and I was panting and melting to him. My mind drifted off to all the pretty lights flashing around me.

Then it was Ken Kelso’s lap I was sitting in. His cock wasn’t as long as Christophe’s but it was appreciably thicker. He also was gripping my buttocks, but whereas Christophe had been slowly sinking inside me, Kelso was rapidly pulling me on and off his cock, giving me a pounding. I lost my grip on his shoulder blades and arched my torso back toward the ground, reaching for the ground under me with my knuckles. Kelso continued to pull me hard on and off his cock.

I got an upside view of Ahmad entering the tent. I realized that Christophe was still in the tent. I registered Ahmad’s wavering voice saying to Christophe, “You need to come. It’s Assane. I think he has the fever.” And then, with Kelso still fucking me, I zoned out into another world altogether.

* * * *

“So, they did send someone.”

“Yes, they sent me, Father Felix,” I answered. “Yours wasn’t the only indication that there was something to look into with this fever business.”

The priest wasn’t at all what I had expected—not as Christophe had painted him. He was American and black, yes. And he was a large man. But if there was any attraction to me in how he had responded thus far, I couldn’t discern it. I wasn’t dumb. I knew that my type—blond, not-quite medium height, lightly muscled, and young looking—attracted many men. Christophe had suggested that Father Felix had a lover of my type before the young Fila tribesman, Yossibo, the priest had written to Doctors Across Borders about. But I wasn’t getting the vibes at all that he had an interest in my “type.”

I had come to the mission by myself, taking the yellow Toyota off-road vehicle Assane drove. It was clear Assane wouldn’t need the car. Christophe had told me he would introduce me to the priest, but I’d left him having a hell of a row with Dr. al-Saadi, over what, I couldn’t tell. Christophe had held Assane in his arms as the young man had gasped his last feverish breath and then he’d lit into Al-Saadi. No one had left for the clinic yet that morning. I needed to talk with Father Felix sooner rather than later, so I’d just taken the Toyota and driven the only road out of the clinic to the mission. We’d passed the mission school on the way to the clinic the previous day.

“You say that this Yossibo told you he was going to die—and that it was because he was a young Fila man?”

“Yes, he did. I of course didn’t believe him. And then he caught the fever and died.”

“What exactly did he tell you?”

“He said he knew that it was one of the Western doctors at the clinic who was giving the young men the fever. He said it was young men like him. He also said he would die because of the sin he had committed.”

“The sin?”

“He said that he had had sex with one of the Western doctors—that he’d let the doctor have sex with him. And that he’d let the doctor give him drugs. He mentioned the Frenchman, Dr. Colbert, and said he needed to tell someone beyond the clinic.”

“He told you this because you were having a relationship with him as well?” I asked.

An expression of such astonishment came over the priest’s face that I nearly shrank away from him. “Certainly not,” he said indignantly.

“Then why would he tell you something like that?” I asked.

“Confession. I was his confessor. I had been his teacher here at the school. He was a promising student. I got him the job as an orderly at the clinic. He said he wanted to learn about medicine—that he wanted to be a doctor himself some day. I believed he was capable of that. And these people deserve doctors of their own kind.”

“You don’t seem to like the Western doctors at the clinic very much,” I said.

He snorted. “No I don’t. If you could see the sort of lifestyle these people led . . .”

I’d more than seen the lifestyle those people led. I was still sore and groggy from what I’d more than seen. It was more than I was comfortable with myself—especially the drugs. But I had to be like them if I wanted them to let their guard down to me.

“That Dr. Colbert, in particular. He doesn’t keep it to the clinic world. He’s been here and tried to undermine my work with the students.”

Ah, I thought, so if Christophe has misled me about this priest, the bad blood between them might be the reason. “But why would the Western doctors be any threat to young Fila tribal men, Father Felix?” I asked. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“I have no idea. All I know is that Yossibo came to me not only to confess the sins he did but also because he was a very frightened young man. He said that he was frightened of this fever that is striking young men and that he was afraid he would get it—and that the doctors at the clinic would give it to him. I’m just reporting what he told me. He said they would kill him and he’s dead. I couldn’t just brush that away. I had to tell his story to someone. That’s why I contacted Doctors Across Borders in New York. This is their operation.”

I thanked him and told him I’d get to the bottom of this one way or the other. I left thinking that someone was trying to lead me in a false direction, either Christophe or the priest. I didn’t want it to be Christophe who was lying to me, but this priest hadn’t been at all what I had expected. He didn’t even watch me walk away. Men who were interested in “my type” always watched me walk away.

When I returned to the clinic, Christophe, Ken Kelso, and Moussa were digging a grave for Assane. He was Muslim and thus needed to be buried before sundown.

“There you are,” Gretta Schmidt said as she came out of the clinic’s entrance when I’d driven up in the yellow Toyota. “I wondered if you men were going to leave me completely alone to handle all of the patients today.” She looked frazzled.

“I see that Christophe is over in the clinic’s cemetery digging a grave, but I don’t see Dr. al-Saadi over there,” I answered. “Isn’t he working in the clinic?”

“No, I haven’t seen him at the clinic at all. I’ve had to carry it all myself so far today.”

When we checked, no one had seen Dr. al-Saadi for hours. That evening he still hadn’t returned. I walked a bit of a distance from the camp and called the Doctors Across Borders office in New York. I told them they needed to send three fresh doctors out to Kongoba. I assured them that the fever issue would be resolved, but I told them I couldn’t say what the issue was and it was going to be resolved yet. After I rang off with them, I called Naples.

The next morning, at my request, Christophe walked with me down toward the river. He made love to me in an animal wallow next to a pond in a stand of elephant grass. The grass was a good five foot high, and where we lay, him on top of me, with me thrusting my buttocks up and leveraging off my feet, meeting him thrust for thrust as we desperately fucked, was where the grass had been matted down by animals watering at the pond and resting here. Our fucking was passionate and frenzied in keeping with me knowing it was our last time. I think he suspected that as well.

He might even have suspected that when we both shot up to enhance the fuck, what I put into his vein was a mixture of a sedative and truth serum rather than our favorite, relatively safe, sex enhancer. After we fucked and when I was laying on top of him, pinning him to the ground, and asking the questions I didn’t want to ask, he answered without hesitation. I don’t know if it was from the drug I gave him or his need to confess, the death of Assane having hit him a decisive blow. It may have been a combination of the two. He didn’t even hesitate to tell me where he had put Dr. al-Saadi’s body—down in the rushes by the river with the hope that wild animals would carry it off.

After I injected him with the other drug I’d brought with me, I lay with him in my arms until he closed his eyes and his breathing had gone shallow. I was the only one to walk out of the elephant grass and back to the staff tents. I told Dr. Schmidt where they could find Dr. al-Saadi’s body, apologized to her for leaving her in the lurch but that replacement doctors were on their way, and assured her the case load would decrease as there would be no more patients with the mysterious fever.

I also told her where they could find Christophe. “He’ll be passed out for several more hours, I think. It’s up to you and him on how you deal with the authorities on Dr. al-Saadi’s death. My guess is that Doctors Across Borders will be just as happy if it was an accident and if Christophe is on the next airplane to New York. I can tell you that Al-Saadi’s death possibly has saved literally millions of lives. Beyond that, I have nothing to say but that the organization has called me away from here.”

I packed my bags, took the yellow Toyota, and drove to the Bamako airport to catch the next available flight to Rome.

* * * *

The view from where I was standing, leaning forward into a stone balustrade on a terrace south of Naples, overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea, would have been spectacular if my face wasn’t being directed skyward by Count Orsini’s hand cupping my chin and turning my head up. His other hand was palming my lower belly, pulling me away from the railing at the top of the cliff. His dick was in my ass, pounding me hard. I had already come, splashing my cum out over the abyss. He was near to his climax. This was his way of both saying, “Welcome back; I appreciate that you came back alive” and asserting that he was my handler as well as my lover.

This was always what Orsini expected, demanded of me, immediately upon my return to him. It was an assertion of control. I had come to both expect and appreciate it. He was a strong-cocked man, both in size and vigor.

I was naked, stripping for him on demand as soon as I’d walked out on the terrace while he was having his breakfast. The young Italian man who was serving him didn’t bat an eye as I stripped down. I’m sure the count was covering him as he covered me. Each time I had come here, there had been a different young man in service to the count. This one’s name, I believe, was Guido.

Orsini was fully clothed—more formally so than one would expect of a man having breakfast on the terrace of his own villa. He was decked out impeccably in his usual all-white suit. Just his fly was open, which was all he needed to be undone to unreel a long cock and put it inside me. I couldn’t see him from where I was positioned, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d been able to keep his white Triliby fedora hat on the entire time he was spiking me. He certainly had it on when he was finished and went back to the breakfast table to wait for me to recover and join him to give my report. “The sun,” he’d simply said when I looked quizzically at him for wearing it at the breakfast table.

He, of course, kept me naked. It was his way of making clear who was in charge.

“So, you didn’t have the stomach for it in the end—with Christophe,” he said, his voice including an edge of censure to it.

“We’ve always operated on not doing more than was necessary,” I answered. “I ascertained he wasn’t completely in it, and he had stopped it himself before I intervened. It has nothing to do with any relationship we’d had.”

“So, he didn’t fuck you?”

“Yes, he fucked me, and I let him shoot me up with drugs to enhance the fuck. But it’s what brought him to opening up to me.” I didn’t add that drugs of my own had done that.

The count seemed satisfied with that explanation. “So the Saudi doctor was doing some sort of experimentation? Or did just not like that particular African tribe.”

“Experimentation, but it was going to go much further than that. Christophe filled in the blanks for me. It wasn’t just experimentation, but it was that. Al-Saadi was in contact with Iran as well as various Mideast terrorist groups. He was trying to develop a specifically targeted virus. He had conquered that. Drugs were being given to all at the clinic through injections and he had reached the stage of zeroing in on young Fila males to test the virus in injections on. Only the young Fila males were susceptible to that particular serum. Al-Saadi was going to change to another group his potential clients would want targeted. The Fila targeting was to show potential clients what was possible. Christophe said that Al-Saadi was going to move on not only to tailor the targets to clients’ needs but also to be able to dispense the virus via drinking water. The potential of terrorists to wipe out whole segments of populations they wanted to even when embedded in populations not affected is staggering.

“It was only when it became obvious to Christophe what the ultimate plan was—that it wasn’t a demonstration of what was possible unless the world paid attention to the danger—that Christophe had begun to balk at helping with the project. When Al-Saadi infected a Fila man he’d promised Christophe he wouldn’t infect, and the young man died, Christophe snapped and killed Al-Saadi—saving me the trouble of doing so myself, incidentally.”

“Very impressive, Wade,” the count said. “You have deserved a rest after this. Do you wish to go to New York and check on how Christophe Colbert is doing?”

“No, thanks,” I answered. “I didn’t choose to meet up with Christophe again. I don’t choose to do so now.”

“Good answer,” the count said, smiling. “Perhaps you would like to rest up here, then. I would be happy to host you. Of course, as big as this villa is, only one of the rooms has a bed in it. If that doesn’t—”

“That suits me fine,” I answered. It was rather a ritual with the count. He always fucked me for days after I’d come back from an operation. I hadn’t realized how worried he’d been about my relationship with Christophe. I had found I wasn’t over Christophe, and, indeed, when it had come to the point of eliminating Christophe for his part in Al-Saadi’s experimentation, I didn’t do so. I knew now that the count would have preferred that I had.

I would, at some point, hook up with Christophe again—in New York or elsewhere. But the count didn’t have to know everything, and I needed to keep on the good side of the count. Those who didn’t keep him pleased had a habit of disappearing without a trace. It was a long, rocky way down from this terrace to the churning sea below.

“It’s not yet 9:00 in the morning, but I have an urge to retire to the bed now,” Count Orsini said, looking intensely at me over the rim of his coffee cup. “Perhaps you’d care to join me for an hour or two.”

“Yes, of course,” I answered. That “hour or two” was also just a ritualistic saying of his. He’d be fucking me all the fucking day long.