When the waiter had turned away, Giles made another observation. “Oh my. And that’s what a man’s ass is supposed to look like.”
David couldn’t help but laugh. “Amen,” he offered, raising his glass for a personal toast. “I take it that you have some experience in studying such things?”
“It has been my lifelong ambition to become personally acquainted with as many of the glorious things as possible. Now that one,” he said with a tilt of his glass toward the waiter who had just left them, “that one I’d love to grab hold of with both hands, feeling the muscle ripple as I do so. I’d love to bite it and make him squirm, preferably as the first step toward making him beg me to fuck him long and hard.”
“It sounds like you’re beyond basic training and are well into advanced studies. In fact, you may be a champion, a ruler in the field.”
“Yes,” Giles observed with a smile toward David. “Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown and crap like that,” he said, which made David laugh again.
“We need to change the subject, please,” David asked. “It would be rude to have to walk around this room with an erection.”
“You have a good libido, I see,” Giles said.
“And the constant blue balls to go with it,” David automatically replied. He instantly regretted the comment, but Giles let it go without comment.
For the first time ever, David had a great time at a presidential event. He sat with Giles, and they talked like old friends who hadn’t seen each other in a very long time. At one point, David noticed Gray studying him with a slight scowl on his face. But Giles said something funny at that same moment, and David looked away from Gray so he could laugh with Giles.
Even while the obligatory toasts were going on, Giles discreetly kept a quiet running commentary about each of the toasts, as well as the toasters. After dinner Gray was still involved in practically nonstop conversations, one-on-one as well as two- or three-on-one. Giles gave David a tour of Buckingham Palace, showing him things most visitors to the palace never got to see. Forty-five minutes later, a Secret Service agent who had been trailing them from a safe distance approached David and said, “Excuse me, sir, but the President has finished and is ready to return to the embassy. I’ll escort you to the car.”
Giles walked with him and the agent to the door. To David’s surprise, he walked outside with them but stopped just before the car, wrapping David in a big hug that he held for longer than usual. Whispering in David’s ear, Giles said, “I think someone is jealous. He’s staring daggers at me.”
“I’ll deal with him. I may have to punish him.”
“Now you’re making me hot,” Giles said with a smile and lighthearted laughter.
David laughed uproariously. “Thank you for a perfectly lovely evening.” Holding both of Giles’s hands, he said, “I was prepared for the worst, but instead I found the very best. Thank you, kind sir, for giving me a most enjoyable evening.”
“Good night, David. Sweet dreams.”
When David hopped into the car, an agent closed the door behind him and took his own seat in the front, and the car started to move almost immediately.
“Have a good evening?” David asked Gray, feeling upbeat and cheerful.
“Yes, it was good. And you? It looks like you made a new little friend.”
David could hear the jealousy in Gray’s voice. He wiped the smile off his face before turning back to Gray. “Giles? Oh, yes, he was fantastic. I haven’t had such a good time with a man in a very long time. It felt so good to talk with someone again. His running commentary during the evening very nearly had me rolling on the floor laughing. And I don’t think ‘little’ is an adequate word for him. He gave me a personal tour of the palace, showing me things most people don’t get to see.”
“Like what? His ass?” Gray asked, momentarily surprising David.
“No. Sadly I didn’t get to see that, although we did share appreciation of the butt on one of the hunkier waiters. We both could have lost ourselves in that one for hours. He was so hot.”
They were silent for the remainder of the short ride back to the embassy. It wasn’t a terribly late night for them since their bodies were still on East Coast time.
Back in their room at the embassy, without asking or hinting, for the first time in a long while, Gray approached David once they were in bed. He practically threw himself at David once they were both naked and beneath the sheets. David hadn’t seen this side of Gray in a long, long time, but he wasn’t complaining.
The sex that followed was sensational, bordering on animalistic. The more primitive parts of David’s brain responded immediately and strongly to Gray’s aggression and need. Their mating was vigorous, strong, rough. Gray was extraordinarily demanding as they made love that night, ordering, cajoling, begging David to take him harder, faster, deeper. Gray’s words had their desired effect on David.
David got into the moment, and as they went on, he moved Gray from one position to another, ending up with Gray on his back with his legs thrown over David’s shoulders. David was pounding away at Gray with an intensity they hadn’t experienced in years, and Gray was still half begging and half demanding more. David grasped Gray’s hands and held them firmly to the mattress above Gray’s head, trapping him beneath David as he took his pleasure from Gray’s body.
When David finally came, it was a total-body orgasm that started in the most distant parts of his body and moved with lightning-fast speed to one focal point. Gray had come a few minutes earlier. David had felt the wetness as it splashed on his belly and chest, and as Gray’s ass clamped down sharply on David’s cock. A moment later, Gray rolled them over, raised himself off David’s dick, and moved into the bathroom to retrieve a washcloth that he used to clean up David’s dick, stomach, and chest.
“Wow, such service,” David observed sleepily. “What did I do to deserve this special treatment?”
“Just saying I love you and that I want you,” Gray commented as he returned to the bathroom to clean himself up. When he returned a moment later, he crawled into bed and backed himself up tight to David, pulling one of David’s arms around his body.
David was surprised to feel his dick get hard again so soon after his last ejaculation, but Gray was pushing his ass back at David’s crotch quite aggressively, rubbing David’s dick and doing good things for him. David was shocked to feel Gray reach around behind himself and line David’s dick up with his butt, pushing back until David was once again inside Gray’s body.
When David was as deep into Gray as possible, Gray grabbed David’s arm and rolled him over until he was on top of Gray as he lay facedown on the bed. Neither could recall the last time they’d made love twice in the same evening, but that night they did, alternately slow and sensual and then hot and hard. David could not remember another time when Gray had been so aggressive in bed, so verbal, so demanding—not that he was complaining. That night, David heard “Fuck me harder” more times than he thought he’d ever heard before in the ten years of their relationship.
After their second, more extended coupling, David lay long and swollen inside Gray’s body. After his breathing was slower and less gasping, he asked, “What brought that on? I’m not complaining. God knows I’m not complaining, but what made you such a tiger in the sack tonight? I want to know so I can turn him loose again in the future. I like having my Gray back.”
“I just felt the need. I had an itch that only you can scratch.”
“Did I take care of your itch?”
“Yes, you did. But it may need more attention again soon.”
“I’m your man. Let me know and I’m good to go.” David tried to thrust his dick a little again, but he was too soft by that point and just slipped out of Gray’s body. “God, I miss sex,” David said as they got settled in for the night. They needed to sleep because Gray had a busy day the next day. Although, given the time showing on the clock by the bed, it wasn’t tomorrow but later that same morning.
DURING THE remainder of their time in London, Giles appeared each day and served as David’s official companion. Each time Gray caught sight of the beautiful young man or heard the mere mention of his name, he stiffened with a combination of worry, upset, and anger.
Each night when they went to bed, Gray was immediately on David like he hadn’t been in months, doing everything humanly possible to show David who he had gone home with. David knew precisely what was going on, but he loved the arousal it stoked in Gray nonetheless.
Their visit to London gave them more sex than they had shared in months. David toyed with the idea of asking Giles to move to Washington so he could keep Gray aroused and intent on proving himself to David. He couldn’t help but chuckle at that idea.
Chapter 13—We’ve Got a Problem
ONCE THEY returned to DC, however, they fell back into old patterns, and Gray once again threw himself into his work, his meetings, and his domestic travels. Most weeks David only saw Gray in bed, still sleeping, when he got up in the morning. When Gray came to bed most nights was a complete unknown to him. David missed the intimacy they had shared in London.
A few weeks after their return from London, David returned to the White House residence after a full day of teaching and dealing with students, feeling exhausted and looking forward to a quiet evening. He had changed into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and was just heading to the refrigerator to get something cold to drink when an agent knocked and entered and asked, “Sir, I need you to come with me. The President has asked that you come to the Situation Room as quickly as possible.”
“I don’t know where that is,” David said.
“I’ll take you. This way, please.”
David could not imagine why anyone would need him in the Situation Room. That was where the President and his national security team dealt with major issues that threatened the country.
Not entirely believing his agent, David reluctantly accompanied him to the Situation Room. He heard his agent speak softly to someone by radio and a door ahead of them was opened from the inside. The agent gestured for David to proceed into the room.
The room was full, every seat around the table taken by a variety of mostly men, most in military uniform. David didn’t know any of the men other than Gray, nor did he know why he’d been summoned. In the back of his mind, he wondered if he’d done something wrong, that someone found objectionable, and whether they were going to try to publicly humiliate him. No one made any effort to give him a seat, which made him feel even more uncomfortable.
He didn’t have to wait long, though. When Gray spotted him, all eyes turned to David, and Gray asked a question he could not have anticipated.
“David, what do you know about the Marburg virus?”
“The virus?” When he saw heads nod around the table, he continued, “It’s very serious. It’s a viral hemorrhagic fever, similar in many ways to Ebola. It’s worse than Ebola, though, in one key way—the death rate from Marburg varies and can be as high as 80 to 90 percent of those infected. If I remember correctly, the death rate for Ebola is around 70 percent.”
“Wait a minute,” one of the men in uniform said. “Are you saying that 80 to 90 percent of people infected with this Marburg virus die?”
“Yes, that has been the experience with it to date. As you can see, it is very serious.”
“How is it treated?”
“There is no cure and no treatment protocol.”
“You’re kidding. There is no treatment?” another man at the table asked, sounding skeptical.
“No. None. All you can do is provide supportive care such as replacing body fluids lost, giving platelets to help with clotting, and if at all possible, getting transfusions from someone of the same blood type who has previously been exposed to the virus, been sickened by it, and recovered from it.”
“How about vaccinations to prevent it?”
“None,” David answered.
“No antibiotics?” another man asked.
“It’s a virus. Antibiotics only work with bacterial infections, not viral infections. They are utterly useless against viruses.”
“Please tell me you’re joking,” Gray asked him imploringly.
“No,” David answered seriously. “Marburg is bad news. Medicine doesn’t have a clue how to handle any of the filoviruses. That’s the family that Marburg is part of.”
“Is this something that any doctor would know about?”
“No, absolutely not. You need an infectious-disease doctor or someone with some specific experience with it. Infectious-disease docs are specialists in diseases like this, but even most of them have probably never seen a case of Marburg or Ebola or the other members of this disease family. They are, fortunately, fairly rare, and most doctors spend their entire careers never seeing a case of Ebola or Marburg. The problem is that when you get one case, you usually get many, many more until the outbreak dies down.
“The only reason I know as much as I do about it is because I’m doctor and also a medical school professor. I teach some of the best of the best, and they keep me on my toes, so I have to keep myself informed about a wide variety of illnesses. I’ve read a great deal about these viruses, but I’ve never seen a case personally.”
David waited for one of them to ask another question, but for the moment, the room was silent. When no one spoke, David asked a question of his own. “I can only assume that there has been an outbreak somewhere here in the United States.”
“Why do you assume that?” someone asked.
“Simple. You’ve summoned me here, and you’re all asking these questions. And I assume it’s within the US, to be of such attention in this room. By the fact that you’ve called me I assume it’s more than one person in question. Why don’t you have the CDC on the phone to ask all these questions?”
“The CDC lost a lot of respect among the American public with the whole Ebola fiasco a couple of years ago. They badly mishandled the whole situation,” one of the men in the room said. “I personally don’t trust them.”
“You still need them. Get them to wherever this outbreak is occurring. Don’t even stop to think about it. This is what they do, even though they are so badly underfunded they’re barely surviving.
“Now, where is the outbreak? Wherever it is, you’ve got to be all over it immediately, no question, no hesitation. You absolutely must contain it at all cost. If you don’t, you could have a major uncontrollable outbreak on your hands in no time at all.”
Everyone looked to the President, who answered David’s question. “We have several people who have fallen ill on a transatlantic flight that is about a half hour out from Dulles Airport.”
“Why are you assuming it’s Marburg?” David asked.
“Several of the passengers who are sick flew from Africa to Germany before boarding that flight to the United States. The pilot has been communicating with his home office, and their medical team strongly suspect Marburg.”
“When that plane lands, you’ve got to quarantine everyone on that flight until you know what you’re dealing with,” David said. “They have absolutely got to be kept in strict isolation while you see what’s going on.”
“That is what some of my advisers here have been saying also,” Gray said.
“The incubation period for Marburg is much shorter than for Ebola. Ebola is twenty-one days, but Marburg is less than half that, nine or ten days, I believe.
“When that plane lands, no one on the ground should have direct contact with anyone onboard unless they are in full hazmat gear. You’ve got to get a quarantine facility set up immediately and get those people moved there as soon as possible. Whatever you do, do not leave them sitting on a plane parked somewhere on an airport tarmac. Remember they’ve been in the air for something like eight hours. Think back to the last commercial flight you took riding in coach. When you landed, you wanted nothing more than to get off that plane, to stretch your legs, to be anywhere but crammed into that small seat. Now think of bein
g in those seats and having several very sick people onboard with you. You’d want to be off that plane at any cost. The longer you delay, the more risk you run of the situation getting completely out of control and people trying to escape.
“Identify a location, get a protocol set up now, and get it in place. It sounds like you’ve got thirty minutes to put everything into operation. That’s not much time.”
David hoped they understood the severity of this situation. He tried to catch Gray’s eye but wasn’t able to. But clearly Gray should know how to read what he was saying.
“Okay, gentlemen, you’ve heard what we need to do. Get to it right now. When that plane lands, I want a protocol in place.”
“And I’d recommend redirecting them to a military base and not a commercial airport.”
“Why is it you want to expose military personnel?” one older military man asked in a clearly angry tone.
“It’s just the opposite. I don’t want to expose anyone, and military personnel are probably more prepared for something like this than anyone else. They have access to the hazmat suits that a regular airport would not. They’ve trained in similar operations. They also would have a way to quarantine the passengers. You will have more control over the operation at a military airfield. There are too many factors outside your control at a commercial airport. And perhaps most important of all, there are no television cameras on a military base.”
“Do it,” Gray ordered.
“Joint Base Andrews?” asked the various military men arrayed around him.
The question hadn’t been asked of him, but David had something to say about the issue. “If you’ve got a major quarantine facility close to there, then sure.”
The President was about to rise from his chair when one of the uniformed men asked David a question. “Could you go there and oversee the medical aspect of the operation until the CDC personnel can get together what they need?”
“No!” the President practically shouted. “He said we need an infectious-disease specialist.”
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