Chapter 1: Introduction
"Harry, what the fuck is going on?"
My wife rarely used profanities before the epidemic. A month of working daily fourteen-hour shifts as a nurse had strained even her Christian upbringing. While I cringed at my young wife's display of intense anger, I was still relieved to see her safely home. Before the pandemic, I used to worry about her walking a couple of blocks from the bus stop to our tiny abode in a rundown section of Brooklyn. Now, a real threat confronted her every day in a CORVID-19 ward at the University Hospital of Brooklyn. Daily, exhausted doctors and nurses were succumbing as they fought to save their patients without adequate medicine, ventilators, or even something as fundamental as personal protective equipment in the largest and most dilapidated public hospital in the city.
My wife was furious to see I had brought a stranger into our home despite our month-long state-imposed isolation. A colorful, handmade mask, provided by another nurse's mother, covered most of her face, but I could see her weary, dark brown eyes, wide with fright. She glowered at me for a moment before glancing at the burly, half-naked, mahogany-colored man sitting next to me on our convertible sofa. Before the days of the coronavirus, my wife would have welcomed any friend of mine, no matter what color their skin was, with a warm hug. Those days were gone, long gone.
She didn't have to spell out the reasons for her fear. Nearly eight thousand people in the city had already died from the coronavirus, and we weren't even at the peak. New York City was on lockdown. You couldn't invite your parents over for dinner. You didn't go outside except in an emergency or if you had an essential job. On the streets, you stayed six feet away from everyone, even your best friends.
I tried my best to calm my wife's fears. "Hermione, I'd like you to meet my old roommate, Dean Thomas. He just got back from covering the civil war in Syria. The Times asked him to do a piece on the pandemic with a focus on health care workers. I checked him over carefully. I think he's free of the coronavirus."
Dean stood up and bowed. He started to extend a hand but mumbled an apology and pulled it back. At the last moment, he grabbed the unraveling knot holding the jumbo bath sheet wrapped around his massive waist. It wouldn't have been cool for my old college roommate to greet my good Christian wife for the first time by displaying what I knew all too well was the most massive penis I had ever seen.
Hermione glared at me. We both knew about asymptomatic carriers who spread the virulent disease for days without exhibiting symptoms.
Her voice rose as she challenged me. "You think? You think he's healthy?"
"I met him down in the lobby and gave him a thorough check-up."
"Oh, great. You took your friend's temperature, checked his pulse, and had him say 'ahh.' Then the omnipotent third-year medical student recently anointed as a resident proclaimed him virus-free."
I always get flustered and lose my chain of thought when my wife gets angry. We don't have a lot of arguments, but the last several weeks had been tough on everyone's nerves.
Dean said, "Hermione, I'm sure I'm safe. I've been in quarantine for two weeks ever since I returned from Syria. I just finished it this morning and came here straight from the hotel.
#
Dean and I were roommates all four years in college and became good friends despite our difference. The University of Michigan claims it uses an artificial intelligence algorithm to assign roommates based upon hundreds of parameters. It's just one of many reasons I don't trust the nerds who write software. Dean and I had far more differences than the few trivial things we have in common.
Sure, we were both over six feet tall, but while Dean was 240 pounds of muscle, I was a lanky kid who fought to maintain 180 pounds. We both played football in high school. I was a wide receiver while my assigned roommate was a fast, burly fullback. Although we were both scholarship students from working-class families, there was a difference in how we obtained our financial aid. I had to work hard for my academic scholarship. However, a host of prominent football universities had pursued Dean before he accepted a lucrative offer from the University of Michigan. I was a premed student majoring in biochemistry while my roommate was an undeclared major whose only goals were to fuck every coed at the U of M, rack up running yards, and get picked up by an NFL team, preferably the Cowboys. Dean was gregarious while I was a studious introvert. Oh yeah, Dean was a black kid from Birmingham, Alabama, while I was white and came from a small lily-white town in rural Western New York. I could count the number of people of color I'd met before college on two fingers.
After a rough start caused by Dean's never-ending stream of female conquests interrupting my school work, we found some common ground and developed a symbiotic relationship. I helped him with school work, and he helped me overcome my shyness around women. I'm pretty sure I got the better end of the deal.
It seems an incredible number of white college girls have an urge to fuck a black classmate and punch their black tickets. What better trophy than a big black running back? Once word got around that Dean had the biggest cock on campus, horny white chicks swarmed all over him. He was in heaven. The endless supply of pussy meant he could fuck a girl at night and dump them the next day without hurt feelings from a happy coed who had just added another trophy to her shelf.
Eventually, Dean noticed my lack of success with women. After expressing his surprise that a good-looking guy like me had problems picking up women, he promised to help. It turned out to be easy. All he had to do was convince one of his conquests that they needed to add a premed student to their trophy collection. I lost my virginity to a tall, buxom, blond a couple of days later and fell for her hard. Dean found me crying when the girl who I thought was the love of my life rejected my pleas to continue the relationship. My roommate sat me down for a talk to explain the difference between love and sex.
"Sex is about the joy you find in satisfying your most basic animal instinct. It's all about physical contact. Love involves higher brain functions and requires a long term commitment by two people. It's about emotional contact in addition to the physical aspects. Your first partner wasn't interested in more than a one-night stand. Be patient. Relax and enjoy the free sex. You'll know when you've found the right woman."
"Dean, you've fucked a considerable number of women. Have you ever been in love?"
"Yeah, once when I was too young to know better. It hurt like hell when she dumped me for the high school quarterback, but I got up, dusted myself off, and found another woman to bed. Harry, you need to have sex again as soon as possible. I don't want you mopping around."
The following weekend, I had sex with another big curvaceous blond. My roommate could hear everything through the thin wall separating our bedrooms and offered to tutor me on sex techniques. He took to leaving his bedroom door open so that I could watch and learn. It took some convincing to get me to leave my door open so he could offer his critique afterward.
Eventually, I got enough confidence to pick up women on my own. I found out I also preferred tall, athletic blonds. My seven inches weren't in the same league as Dean's cock, but it was still well above average and proved to be a problem with smaller girls.
Dean learned something from my tutoring that proved useful after college. He was struggling with his writing assignments in our required English class. I suggested writing about something my roommate knew well. Since he could hardly write in detail about his sexual conquests, I suggested he talk to his partners and write stories about their lives. He was reluctant at first since his relationships focused on how fast he could get a girl naked in his bed. After he began talking to his sex partners, he thanked me.
"I can't believe how much women get turned on just by asking a few questions about their background and listening attentively. I've even managed to get that big shy blond who works in the library into my bed. What a great pickup technique. I don't know how to thank you."
Dean's essays improved dramatically, and he pulled his English grade up to a solid B. The next year, my roommate took a class in journalism and aced it. His newly developed writing skills allowed him to change his career goal when he blew out his knee in the Rose Bowl his senior year.
Eventually, Dean ran low on eager, trophy hunters, and his technique evolved. He began to rely more and more upon his new verbal seduction skills. Occasionally, one of his dates would chicken out at the sight of his enormous black cock. Dean showed more patience with hesitant women than I would have expected in a star fullback. Dean would coax his reluctant date to take it one small step at a time while continually talking calmly and caressing them. As his eager student, I listened carefully. His technique went something like this:
"It's ok, we don't have to screw, but you may never get another chance to touch one this big, black and hard. Go ahead. It won't bite."
After a girl wrapped their hand around his cock, they were hooked. The next step was simply to get the girl to stroke his uncircumcised monster. Once he produced a little pre-cum, he'd offer to let them lick the fat head. Very few of his partners, needed any coaxing to take his hard cock into their mouths. However, I've never seen any woman deep-throat his black beast, but a handful tried and failed.
While the girl was giving him head, his skillful hands would roam over her naked body. After he'd gotten her aroused enough for him to work a couple of his thick fingers deep into her vagina, he would describe the pleasure she would experience by taking just the head of his cock in her beautiful pussy. He would promise that he would lie on his back and allow her to be entirely in control. This step often took the most time, but Dean was willing to lick and finger fuck a girl until she was on the edge of a powerful orgasm. Desperate women were willing to do anything to relieve their arousal. Once he had the head of his cock inside, the rest naturally followed. All of his sex partners, except for the most depraved, expressed their surprise that they had managed to take every last inch of his enormous black cock. It was the reason he preferred large, athletic women. His preference for blonds was just a matter of taste. He didn't seem to care if they were natural blonds as long as they were tall and had curvaceous figures.
#
Dean spent his career as a foreign correspondent hopping from one hot spot to another. He'd spent the last several months in the tunnels under Homs in northern Syria. Now he was back home in the most prominent coronavirus hot spot on the planet.
While I was examining my best friend in the lobby, I asked, "What was it like in Syria? How bad has the virus hit them?"
Dean shrugged. " The whole country outside of the capital has been devastated by the civil war. The government had killed hundreds of thousands of its citizens. A lot more civilians have been wounded or tortured. Millions of people have fled their homes. It's going to be hell when the virus burns through the refugee camps. There aren't any real hospitals left. It's only a matter of time, but for now, there are only a couple of cases reported in Damascus. The doctors in Homs said they hadn't seen any yet."
Once I felt my friend was safe, I gave Dean a warm hug and led him upstairs to the tiny deluxe studio apartment I shared with my beautiful, young wife. Before the plague overwhelmed us, we'd had plans like all newlyweds. Once I finished my residency, Hermione and I would move back to her home town of Bemidji in Northern Minnesota. There is a long-standing shortage of doctors and nurses in the heartland, and the city had offered to pay off my student loans if I took over the retiring practice of a doctor who wanted to retire. My wife would work in the local hospital while we raised a family. Hermione had come from a large family, and I welcomed her desire to have three or four children.
Before opening the door to our apartment, I explained our decontamination protocol to Dean. Once inside, he would stand on some clean newspapers, remove all his clothes, and carefully place them in a bag. I would turn on the shower for him, so he didn't have to touch anything. I'd had to use a scarce sanitary wipe to clean up after myself when I went through the procedure earlier. While he scrubbed himself thoroughly with a stiff brush, I would wash his clothes. Thank God for the washer and dryer. They were the reason we paid an extra fifty dollars a month for the 'deluxe' studio.
The landlords had advertised the one-room one bath efficiency apartment as being 400 square feet. The university's married housing had a long waiting list, so the tiny apartment was supposed to be our temporary home until I finished my residency. With most of our possessions from college in boxes stacked to the ceiling against the walls, the amount of usable space was considerably less.
The main room served as a living room, kitchen, dining room, and bedroom. The bathroom had a small shower to the left, a sink and mirrored medicine cabinet straight ahead, and a toilet to the right. Two people could fit inside the tiny bathroom only if one of them were taking a shower. Luckily, we didn't usually have guests thanks to the quarantine, because the bathroom door had been removed for repairs. Sam, the maintenance man, had taken the door down to his workshop in the basement shortly before WHO declared Covid-19 was a pandemic. We hadn't seen Sam or the door since. Unfortunately, he kept his shop locked. Hermione and I had gotten used to the lack of privacy while using the bathroom.
While Dean was in the shower, I meticulously cleaned the thoughtful presents he had brought with sanitary wipes. I hadn't had beer or wine in weeks. My amazing former roommate had brought a half case of cold Brooklyn Lager and two chilled bottles of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc.
Once he got out of the shower, we popped a beer and sat on the couch to start the interview. I'm a bit of a technology nerd and got distracted when Dean pulled out a new iPhone to record our conversation.
"Wow! That is one big phone."
"My old phone got trashed in Syria. My editor liked my work so much that he gave me a top of the line iPhone 11 Pro Max."
"We all loved your reporting from Syria and Myanmar. I heard you earned the Pulitzer for your piece on the genocide against the Rohingya."
While we were chatting about the iPhone, my friend attached a small tripod and a massive battery pack. He touched the screen a couple of times and set it on the coffee table.
I looked around the cluttered room and said, "You aren't going to shoot video, are you?"
Dean knew I was a neat freak from our college days as roommates.
"Nah, but it does shoot amazing video even in low light. The ultra angle lens is great for close-ups. They even gave me the model with a half-terabyte of memory. With an external battery pack, I can shoot video for hours. The camera even has a mode where it takes photos or video when it detects motion. Man, I wish I had it when I was working in those dingy tunnels in Syria."
Dean was a professional. Without realizing it, he had helped me relax with a beer and gotten me comfortable talking about camera trivia. Once he had me at ease, he began interviewing me about my experiences working in a coronavirus ward.
By the time my wife got home from her shift, I had just started my third beer. I promised myself it would be my last. I had to get up at 4 AM to make my shift at Jamaica Hospital. I was dreading tomorrow. One of the anesthesiologists was going to teach me how to intubate patients. Some doctors said connecting a coronavirus patient up to a ventilator is like working on an unshielded nuclear reactor. One wrong move and the person you were trying to save would regurgitate virus-laden fluids everywhere. Under the best conditions, anesthesiologists found it challenging to avoid becoming contaminated. Since we didn't have enough personal protective equipment, the odds were never in our favor.
#
"But it was better to be paranoid, I thought than dead."
- Felix Francis in "Triple Crown," 2016
With health care workers dropping like flies, my wife's anger was understandable. She was more restrained than I deserved, considering the long stressful hours we were both working taking care of highly infectious patients.
Hermione wasn't finished lecturing me. She caught sight of the empty beer bottles on the coffee table. Dean was still nursing his second. He leaned forward to stop his voice recording app. When he sat back, his iPhone was haphazardly pointing at the kitchen.
"Harry, I can't believe you. You're risking our lives for a couple of lousy beers."
I kept my mouth closed. I knew I'd fucked up. I considered protesting that Dean was risking his life for an interview that would help quarantined citizens understand that the healthcare system they depended on was broken and badly in need of help. I could have said the risk he posed to us was insignificant compared to our working around coronavirus patients all day. I certainly wasn't dumb enough to argue with her wildly inaccurate statement that Brooklyn Lager was a lousy beer.
Before I could reply, Hermione crossed her arms over her generous breasts and glared at Dean and me. "Ok, doctor, maybe you can tell me just how I'm supposed to follow our decontamination procedure in front of your best friend."
Perhaps, our process was excessive, but we were both health care workers, and we had seen young, healthy colleagues die a painful, lingering death from coronavirus. In addition to pneumonia, people were dying from blood clots that induced strokes and cytokine storms from an over-reactive immune system that attacked the patient's organs. There were no effective therapies, and a vaccine was over a year away.
I had to suppress a laugh. The idea of my innocent young wife stripping naked in front of my half-naked friend was unimaginable. She was one of those rare Christian women who live up to their pledge to save themselves for marriage despite a lot of guy's best efforts, including mine. In college, my black roommate had gone through women like an allergy patient goes through tissues. He had a strong preference for tall, athletic, curvaceous blond women like my wife. He commented that he was afraid of breaking one of those skinny want-a-be models if he squeezed them too hard.
My tastes were similar, except I preferred tall, athletic women with brains. Dean didn't care about what lay between a women's ears because he didn't plan on staying around long enough for it to matter. Since I was lazy and an opportunistic hunter, most of my dates in college were his castoffs. The few times I found a woman on my own, Dean respected me enough to leave them alone. As a result, I trusted my ex-roommate completely around my wife.
There was no way Hermione or I would ever violate our strict cleaning protocol. Even though we changed clothes after our shifts, we had come from a hospital rife with infection. Also, we had ridden home on public transportation that the city workers sanitized only once a day if we believed the mayor.
I immediately understood my wife's problem. She'd been raised in a conservative Christian family in Minnesota and had a hard enough time adjusting to changing for gym class in high school. She was still uncomfortable stripping to her underwear in front of other women in the hospital locker room. Getting naked in front of a big, black, handsome stranger just wasn't going to happen anytime before the Second Coming.
2
Dean immediately understood my wife's concern since he had just gone through our strict procedure. My big black friend looked around our tiny apartment for a hint of any space offering privacy and laughed. He was born and raised in Alabama. He put on all his Southern charm as he stood up.
"Well, Mam, I'd be a real cad if I didn't remove myself from your presence while you prepare for your shower. I need to visit the restroom anyway. Please let me know when you are ready. I promise on my word of honor. I won't peek."
My wife pointed to Dean's iPhone. "I hope that thing isn't making a movie."
Dean smiled. "There's a light that comes on when it's recording a video."
He leaned over and touched the screen. A light blinked on and then off when he poked it again. When he set the camera and tripod back down on the coffee table, it was pointing in the general direction of the door where my wife was standing.
Dean clutched the knot in his bath towel and took the few short steps required to take him into the bathroom. He flipped the light switch, which also turned on a noisy fan. He looked around in confusion.
He yelled so we could hear him over the noisy fan. "Where's the door?"
Hermione glared at me as I laughed. It had been my idea to ask the maintenance man to shave enough off the bottom to prevent the warped door from sticking. She blamed me for the missing door. Hey, I hadn't planned on a pandemic.
I yelled back, "Sorry, Dean. I removed the door to get it fixed. You'll just have to pretend there's one. You know. Like Les Nessman in "WKRP in Cincinnati."
Dean shook his head and smiled. "Well, it's not any worse than working in a war zone. Just ask your sweet wife not to look while I relieve myself."
My wife had started removing her clothes as soon as my friend had stepped into the bathroom. She tossed her cloth mask into the bag and followed it with the scrub cap that covered her wavy shoulder-length blond hair. She quickly removed the old scrubs she had changed into after her shift. When she added her bra to the bag, I was treated to the sight of her large gorgeous breasts jiggling unfettered. She stopped when she got down to her white bikini panties. I assumed it was because she was nervous about Dean, who she was watching intently for any sign he was peeking.
I followed her eyes to the bathroom and suppressed a laugh. Dean had pulled his big black penis from under the towel and was peeing profusely. I've never had a woman complain about my seven inches, but my best friend's big, black, uncircumcised cock was the largest I'd ever seen. His massive frame made it look smaller than it was. His monster was a good three inches longer than mine and considerably fatter. One night, after he'd had too much to drink, I'd heard him refer to it as his pussy destroyer.
When Dean finished, he gave his cock a couple of shakes. His equally massive balls jiggled before he lowered the towel over his member. He turned to the sink and washed his hands.
Dean yelled, "Hermione, are you ready for your shower?"
My wife coughed. "Almost. Give me a second, please."
She looked at me with wild eyes and whispered, "Oh my God, it's real. I thought you were just making up stories to get me excited."
After Hermione and I been married awhile, our sex life became routine. I'd started spicing it up with some stories about Dean. My old roommate didn't have a modest bone in his body. I'd often watched him fucking some blond bimbo in his bedroom. If the girl couldn't see me, I'd stay and watch him driving that big black cock deep into the girl's widely stretched pussy. Of course, I never admitted my voyeurism to my wife, but my tales were all based upon reality.
I kept having to increase the lurid details to hold my wife's interest. Eventually, I began pretending that I was Dean Thomas, and my only goal in life was to seduce her. I was familiar with my roommate's seduction techniques. Hermione enjoyed listening to my compliments about her sexy ass and strawberry nipples while I stroked her back. She got aroused when I imitated a Southern accent and tried coaxing her into touching my big black cock. I loved feeling her intense response when I drove my throbbing cock into her sopping wet pussy.
I said, "Everything I told you about Dean was true. If anything, the stories I told you were very mild."
My wife swallowed hard. She stared at the floor as she hooked her fingers in the waistband of her panties and pushed them down her long, athletic legs. She bent over and stepped out of her last piece of clothing. She added them to the bag and stood up. I had a good look at her glistening pussy before she covered her breasts and sex with her hands and arms. I loved the tiny triangle of curly blond pubic hair she had left after shaving off the rest of her bush. It was evident from the whispy stubble covering her pussy that she hadn't shaved in several days. The flaxen triangle pointing at her protruding clit was proof she was a natural blond. My cock responded to her obvious arousal.
I looked at Dean and saw his face in the mirror above the sink. His eyes were locked on my wife's naked body. His smile told me he approved of my choice in women. I felt strangely aroused, watching a cocksman like Dean lusting after my innocent wife. I didn't worry about him for an instant. He had proved more than once that I could trust him around my girlfriends.
I'd been thrilled a month ago when my wife shaved off most of her pubic hair before joining me in bed. She said all the nurses were doing it to make it easier to wash up after a long shift on the coronavirus ward. I'd been a lot less excited about her short-cropped haircut. I'd preferred it when her wavy locks fell to the middle of her back. Now that I thought about it, that night was the last time we'd had the time and energy to make love. This damn pandemic needed to end soon.
My wife's body was trembling. I knew she wasn't cold. Our apartment was above the building's boiler room. In the middle of winter, with the radiator shut off, the temperature in our apartment never dropped below 78 degrees. We had only one window overlooking the street, and it was painted shut. All the window let in was traffic noise and the light from a bright marquee across the street. At least with the city under quarantine, it was quiet outside. However, the marquee carried a message thanking essential workers and stayed on all night.
No, my wife was trembling because she was stark naked in the same room as the virile black man who had been the focus of her dreams for the last year. We'd even acted out her rape fantasy. Maybe in her mind, the only thing stopping him from seizing her fertile young body and using her as he liked was my presence.
My wife's voice broke as she squeaked, "I'm ready for my shower."
I yelled, "Dean, could you turn on the shower? Set it to hot and then sit down on the couch. I'm going to start dinner."
"Seriously, Harry, there's no need to waste your food supplies on me. I can pick up some take out."
Dean kept his eyes down as he walked to the couch. I was amused to see the enormous tent in the towel that was his only covering. As my wife sidled by the coffee table, Dean grabbed his iPhone and tapped on the screen.
I was happy when Hermione responded to my friend turning down my invitation to dinner. "Nonsense, Dean. You're our guest. Who knows when we'll see you again. It won't be a feast, but it'll save you from hunting down dinner. Most restaurants are closed."
Hermione paid the price for talking. My friend smiled at her generous offer and reflexively looked up at her. Dean's eyes followed her jiggling ass into the shower as she squealed and ran into the bathroom. I have to admit I laughed. I'm pretty sure Dean was only the second man to see my wife's gorgeous bubble butt.
I turned to prepare dinner with a grin on my face. Hermione was right when she said it wouldn't be a feast. We were lucky to have enough food to offer my big friend. Fortunately, my wife had recently traded with another nurse for a case of instant ramen noodles. I opened four cartons, microwaved some water, and added it to the noodles. I'd learned to modify the packaged ramen from a Korean medical student. I cracked an egg into each container, added a bit of butter, and topped it with a slice of cheddar cheese. The hardest part was slicing up a couple of green onions while the noodles and eggs cooked. I had dinner on the coffee table by the time my wife finished her quick but thorough shower.
Hermione smiled at me nervously as she stepped out of the shower and dried herself with an old threadbare bath towel. I realized my friend was wearing our only large bath towel. A couple of new bath sets were just one of many things on our list when we bought our dream home in Minnesota.
Dean was a gentleman and focused on his iPhone, while Hermione struggled to cover herself with a small ragged bath towel that had seen better days. She managed to knot the top corners just above the swell of her breasts. The skimpy towel left a small gap of exposed pink flesh down the right side of her body. She checked herself in the mirror and blushed at the sight of her ass cheeks peeking out below the bottom of the towel. She adjusted the rag to cover the bottom of her gorgeous butt, which exposed so much soft breast flesh she was close to displaying her dark pink areoles. Hermione snuck into the room and headed for the chest of drawers containing her underwear.
I said, "Dinners getting cold."
Dean's deep laugh filled the room.
"Hermione, I hope you're not going to get formal on me. It wouldn't be fair since I'm stuck wearing a towel while my clothes dry. If anything, Harry is overdressed."
My wife looked at Dean's muscular, dark mahogany-colored and barely-covered body and blushed.
"You can't expect me to eat dinner wearing nothing more than this old rag."
I'm not sure what came over me. Maybe it was all the beers on top of weeks of twenty-hour shifts watching patients die despite our best efforts to fight a disease for which we had no effective medications. Maybe it was a desire to flaunt my beautiful, unobtainable wife in front of my former roommate after having watched him parade one gorgeous conquest after another before me in college.
I managed to keep a straight face as I said, "A hostess should never make their guests uncomfortable. Besides, it wouldn't be polite for us to start eating before you join us. Come on. Dinner's getting cold, and there's nothing worse than cold, greasy noodles."
"Harry, I'm barely covered."
It was my turn to laugh. "Don't be so modest. Dean already saw your naked butt when you ran into the bathroom."
Hermione glared at me for a moment.
"Harry, you are such a jerk."
Hermione flounced her cute ass down in the middle of the couch a bit too hard and let out a squeal as the vital knot fell apart. She barely managed to catch the towel before exposing anything important as far as I could see from the kitchen. However, the gap in her towel was on Dean's side, and his grin hinted that he'd seen more, perhaps a lot more than I had. While she fiddled with the knot, Dean filled a large glass with white wine for her. We didn't own any real wine glasses, so I'd set her place with a water glass. My wife is a lightweight when it comes to alcohol, and the quantity in her drink was twice her regular portion for dinner at a restaurant. I grabbed my fourth beer and sat beside her. She picked up her glass and gulped her wine.
Her long bare legs were raised on the balls of her feet and nervously bouncing up and down. From where I sat, I could see her long pale thighs were exposed almost up to her crotch. The gap in the side of her covering left her right hip bared to Dean's hungry gaze. When her naked thigh accidentally brushed my friend's equally bare leg, she recoiled like she'd touched a live wire. She pressed her body against mine. I could feel her heart beating wildly. I hoped she could relax enough to eat.
Dean picked up his iPhone and said, "Hermione, your husband was extremely accommodating. He's answered all my questions about his experiences as a fledgling doctor at the hospital. It would help my story if I could get a nurse's viewpoint on the coronavirus crisis. Could I interview you while we eat?"
My starving wife had just stuffed a large bite of noodles in her mouth. She looked at me as she slowly chewed. Hermione is a rather private person, and I felt the need to give my encouragement.
"Sweetheart, the Times has been very sympathetic to health care workers. The President has said we are at war with an invisible enemy. I think coverage from a real war correspondent would show the public what it's like fighting in the trenches. Maybe, we could get people who refuse to practice social distancing to understand the importance of following what historically has been one of the best approaches to pandemics. Without medications or a vaccine, it's our only hope. We need all the publicity we can get."
My wife and I had often talked about the problem caused by people who didn't take the horrific disease seriously. Unfortunately, 80 to 90 percent of Covid-19 cases are mild or asymptotic. For most of the general public, if they knew someone who came down with the disease, it was likely it would be someone with a mild case. It was easy to understand why people would conclude that the plague wasn't any worse than the common cold. The reports of crowded beaches, packed churches, and big drinking parties carried on the nightly news caused both of us heartburn. People with mild cases going to public places were the cause of most of the infections. Health care workers saw the seriously ill patients who labored painfully to take a breath. It was demoralizing to watch helplessly as a patient's organs failed.
I knew my wife wanted to get the story out. Hermione washed down a bite of ramen with another big gulp of wine.
"Ok. What do I have to do?"
Dean set his iPhone down on the back of the coffee table.
"Just relax and answer my questions as best you can. Let's start with some background. Your accent suggests you came from the upper mid-west. Am I right?"
Hermione said, "Bemidji, Minnesota is about as upper as it gets. Another fifty miles north and you're in Canada. The town is famous as the birthplace of Harry Bunyan. There's a big world-famous statue of him in the middle of town. It's also near the headwaters of the Mississippi. Bemidji is a beautiful place with forests and lakes."
"You look fit. Were you an athlete?"
"I played lacrosse and basketball in high school."
Dean smiled. "Isn't lacrosse the badass Indian game where everyone runs around smacking their opponents with a stick? How did you come to play such a rough sport?"
Dean's big smile was infectious. I saw Hermione smile at my friend for the first time. I had to admire Dean's interview technique. He gave her time to think about her answers while she slowly finished her meal. I hoped my big ex-roommate wasn't too hungry after he wolfed down two cartons of noodles.
My badass wife laughed. "Lacrosse is very physical, but we wear helmets, and you get a penalty for hitting someone. There are several reservations outside Bemidji, so the game is popular in high school. I'm a quarter Anishinaabe on my mother's side, so I grew up playing the game with my full-blood cousins."
"I'm sorry. I didn't get that. You're a quarter what?"
"Anishinaabe is the name the people prefer. You may be more familiar with the names Ojibwe or Chippewa."
"Where did your other ancestors come from?"
"My Dad's Swedish. I got my blond hair from him. My Mom's not sure about her other half but suspects they were English and Scottish. My brown eyes and high cheekbones are pure Ojibwe."
"How did you end up in New York City?"
"I have a widowed aunt in Brooklyn. Her husband was a Mohawk Indian ironworker, who died in a construction accident. The tuition for state residents at the State University of New York Downstate Health Sciences University is considerably lower than any nursing school in Minnesota. I used my aunt's address to apply. I'm now working at the University Hospital of Brooklyn, so you can be sure that New York will get their money back. The best part is that after three years of working there, I'll get my student loans forgiven."
"How did you and Harry meet?"
Hermione took a deep breath. She reached up and touched her blond hair.
"It was early in my last year of nursing school, and I had recently broken up with a guy who I thought was the one. My short, oversexed roommate, Ashley, was tired of my self-pity. She pressured me into going to a party. She said there was a first-year medical school student she wanted me to meet. My extroverted roommate described him as the sweet, studious type. I needed a break from my studies, so I agreed. I warned her not to expect too much because I wasn't ready to date again.
"I wasn't surprised when as soon as we arrived at the party, she threw her arms around the neck of a tall, dark-haired guy. She stood on her tiptoes and pulled his lips down to hers for a long passionate kiss. I was embarrassed as I watched her grind her tiny, hot body against his. I wondered if he was a recent conquest or her target for tonight.
"When she broke her embrace, he laughed. It was a nice, deep, easy laugh. He smiled. 'Ashley, nice to see you too. Are you trying to make Patrick jealous?'
"Ashley laughed, 'Do you think it worked?'
"The dark-haired guy wiped his steamy glasses on his polo shirt and said, 'He's headed this way. Judging by the look on his face, he's going to beat the snot out of me.'
"It was Ashley's turn to laugh. 'Then I think you better take my roommate out on the dance floor while I play with Patrick's head some more.'
"So that was how we met. We dated for a couple of weeks before I kissed the lips that my roommate had kissed so hard. I was happy when Ashley confided she'd never managed to get Harry in bed. We took our time, letting our relationship deepen. He asked me to marry him just before I graduated."
Hermione had relaxed a lot, telling one of her favorite stories. Dean noticed her glass was empty and poured her some more wine.
Dean said, "I'm sorry I missed your wedding. I was in West Africa, covering the Ebola epidemic."
I said, "Your coverage of the crisis was incredible. No one else captured the heartbreaking impact on Africans the way you did."
Dean ignored my comment.
"Hermione, tell me about your wedding."
My wife smiled at her happy memories. I heard her sigh, and she relaxed a little more.
"It was everything I ever dreamed about for my wedding day. We held it in my home town of Bemidji because I have a lot more relatives than Harry. His parents and his sister's family flew out for the weekend. Our parish priest performed the wedding service at St. Agnes. My mother is half Ojibwe, so we went out to the Red Lake Indian Reservation for a second ceremony conducted by my great uncle, Walter High Hawk. He is an old midi. You can think of him as a healer or by the white man's word, 'medicine man.' We celebrated on the shore of Lower Red Lake surrounded by dense forest. There was a gorgeous sunset, and a flock of Canadian geese filled the sky. Walter said that was a good omen, and we would have many healthy children. Afterward, the party went on all night."
I had to chime in with my memories.
"It was a wild party. The parts I remember best are Hermione's four brothers warning me one after the other what they would do to me if I ever made her cry a single tear. Your younger brother was particularly gruesome. He said he would hang me from a tree by my guts while I was still suffering from the tortures his older brothers had inflicted.
"When your great uncle got me alone to give me a warning, I figured he was going to threaten to take me down from the tree, pour honey on my battered body and stake me to an anthill. Instead, he said he'd been having visions of an invisible, unfeeling, and mindless creature that would attack every thinking being on the planet. Hermione and I would be among the warriors fighting the beast. When the battle was at its peak, and everything appeared helpless, we would encounter an enormous dark being that would unknowingly threaten to consume our souls. The beast wasn't evil. It was just the beast's nature. He told me I had to be like the aspen tree. He told me to cling to the bedrock below with my roots and bend in the wind above, or the dark beast would destroy us.
3
"Hermione had told me about Walter and his visions. She said they were often difficult to understand, but they always came true. I was worried enough that I asked Walter questions. He didn't help much, but when I asked about the bedrock, he muttered something that sounded derogatory before he answered. 'Hermione is your bedrock. You need to cling tightly to her no matter how provocative the dark being's mindless onslaughts prove to be.' I asked if Hermione and I would survive. Walter shook his head and said, 'That I cannot see. My future ends after the mindless being reaches full strength.' I took my eyes off of the old midi for a second, and he was gone."
Hermione said, "You're scaring me. You never mentioned Walter's vision. Part of it has already come true. The whole world is fighting the coronavirus pandemic. I need to talk to my uncle about the dark being. Maybe, I can call home later in the week."
Hermione shuddered and finished her wine. She made a grave error when she half rose from the couch and leaned over to fetch the bottle sitting at the back of the coffee table. My wife had forgotten her trim body was naked under the skimpy towel. As she bent over to grab the wine, she flashed her ass as well as her clean-shaven pussy that was visible between her parted thighs. She must have felt a draft on her sweaty ass because she brushed her free hand down her lower back.
She squealed when her fingers encountered the crack between her luscious ass cheeks and swept over the moist opening to her vagina. She threw herself back onto the couch with the same disastrous results as the first time she sat down too hard. Once again, the knot flew open only this time the towel fell to her waist.
My wife giggled, "Oopsie."
She carefully set the wine bottle she'd managed to grab down next to her glass. Her face was red as she fumbled with the towel for what felt like an eternity before she managed to get it tied. She filled her glass quickly and took a couple of big gulps. Her legs were once again bouncing around on the balls of her feet.
Dean said, "Thanks, Harry, for sharing the old guy's scary vision. I had Hermione all nice and relaxed. Now I have to start all over."
While he was talking, my friend put his hand on my wife's jouncing leg just above her knee and gave it a firm squeeze. I raised my fingers to my lips and mimicked zipping them shut. Hermione stared at the large black hand wrapped around her leg and poured more wine into her glass.
Dean left his hand on my wife's leg as he turned back to my wife and asked a series of simple questions like how many children she wanted and what baby names she liked. Finally, he felt she was relaxed enough to begin the interview. By that point, the wine bottle was three-quarters gone, and my friend's big hand was halfway up her thigh.
"What do you miss most about your life before the crisis?"
My wife took another large gulp of wine and thought for a moment.
"I miss going for long runs with Harry in the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. It's where we went for our first date. After a nice run, we would do yoga stretches and then lie out on the lawn with the sun shining on our sweaty bodies. I miss being outside so much."
I laughed. With the clothes dryer running, our apartment had been turned into a sauna.
I said, "We don't need to go to the Botanical Gardens' tropical greenhouse to get hot and sweaty."
Dean refilled my wife's wine glass and said, "Harry, it would be helpful if we could confine the interview to Hermione and me. "
"Sorry."
By the time Dean concluded the interview, Hermione had polished off the entire bottle of wine. It was her only visible reaction to discussing the horrors she lived through daily in a CORVID -19 Intensive Care Unit. She had expertly described how her ICU was overcrowded with some of the city's poorest and sickest patients.
Dean said, "Thanks, Hermione, that was one of the best interviews I've ever conducted. Thanks, Harry, for your interview and a wonderful dinner. It's late. I should probably be going."
"No need to rush off. Hermione and I won't turn into pumpkins for another hour. Besides, it's time for the mayor's nightly briefing. As a war correspondent, you need to keep up with the current fighting on the ground."
I flipped on the wall-mounted TV. The briefing had just started. After giving the still rising daily numbers, the mayor said he had ordered stricter enforcement of the quarantine. He had ordered the police to arrest anyone on the street without a valid permit, indicating they were an essential worker. Violations would result in immediate incarceration on Rikers Island without a hearing. My wife's comment summed up my reaction.
"Oh God, that prison is a hotbed of infections. Locking someone up on Rikers Island is a death sentence."
Even Dean was stunned for a moment before he recovered his typical, carefree attitude. I doubted he'd been back long enough to go through the bureaucratic maze required to get an essential workers' badge. He hadn't been wearing one when he arrived.
Dean said, "I saw a lot of people on the street on my way here. Hell, there was a pickup basketball game in the park at the end of your street. It's a big city. There's no way they can arrest everyone. I think I'll take my chances. At least they're not dropping barrel bombs on the citizens like the government was doing in Syria."
Hermione said, "I hope you're prepared to wait for a bus. A lot of drivers are out sick. Nothing is running on schedule. I had to wait 40 minutes tonight."
"Well, it's only five miles to the place I'm staying. I can walk if necessary."
The briefing had just ended when we heard sirens. A loudspeaker outside our window ordered the people in the park to return home. We ran to the window and watched as people started throwing rocks at a police car. Another couple of patrol cars and a van filled with a SWAT team arrived. The police fired tear gas and charged the rock throwers. A shot rang out, and the riot became deadly. We watched in horror as people were handcuffed and dragged to vans. They took two people to the hospital. I wasn't sure if they were alive when they were loaded into an ambulance.
Hermione said, "There's no way we're letting you go home tonight. The couch folds out into a Queen-size bed. We'll just have to share it."
Unfortunately, she was right. With the sofa bed unfolded, the only free floor space was in the bathroom. Hermione and I needed our sleep, and Dean would be crippled if he tried sleeping on the cramped floor. My big black friend looked around the tiny apartment and shrugged. I started clearing the coffee table by dumping our trash in the kitchen wastebasket.
Dean said, "If the bed doesn't collapse under my weight, I'm game. Sure beats sleeping on the floor of a cave. Hell, after two weeks in quarantine, I'm glad for the company. I need to hit the bathroom again. Can someone grab me another beer."
Hermione walked into the kitchen and pressed her body against mine. I spun my wife around and pushed her against the kitchen counter. I had my hands on her tight naked ass under the skimpy towel, and I didn't want Dean to see me copping a quick feel. When my wife gasped, I thought it was because I'd pressed a couple of fingers into her surprisingly wet pussy. Instead, it was because she was staring at Dean over my shoulder. I could hear him pissing like a racehorse despite the noise of the fan. She whispered in my ear even though I doubted Dean could overhear us.
"Oh, Sweet Jesus, it's so big. How does any woman handle that monster? It would destroy my poor little pussy."
I laughed when I should have yelled at my innocent wife for even thinking about taking Dean's big black cock in her tight pussy. Why should I be surprised? I had reaped the benefits of her arousal for months when I told her stories of Dean's sexual exploits.
I heard the toilet flush, and my wife turned her attention to me. She kissed me hard and drove her tongue inside my mouth. Her hips began to slowly grind against my crotch as I worked my fingers deeper into her wet pussy. Damn, it had been a month since we last did it. Back then, I was in medical school. Life was still normal, and the government said the coronavirus outbreak would be contained in China. I remembered Hermione telling me she had stopped taking birth control so we could get a head start on our family. I would be graduating from medical school in a few months and starting my residency in Minneapolis. I wondered if she was still off birth control.
Hermione whispered, "Do you know what today is?"
Four beers on top of too little sleep for weeks didn't help my thinking.
"Is it Tuesday? I'm not sure. Maybe it's Thursday. I'm pretty sure it's a day that begins with a 'T.' So it's Thursday, right?"
Hermione laughed so hard that I felt her vagina contract around my fingers.
"Silly. It's our anniversary. I was thrilled when I saw your schedule for the week. I realized we could both be off tonight if I switched with another nurse and did a double shift tomorrow. I've been dreaming about celebrating with my special man for days. I thought maybe we'd get lucky and make a baby. I was devastated when I saw Dean sitting on our couch."
When we got married, I'd made an oath that I wouldn't be like other guys and forget anniversaries. I'd even put it in my calendar app. However, I'd been so stressed at work that I'd turned off all notifications on my phone.
"Oh shit, I'm sorry. I can't believe I forgot."
"It's ok, Sweetheart. I understand. Just don't think I'm going to let you off easy. As soon as your big black friend falls asleep, I'm going to fuck your brains out."
My innocent wife never used to talk dirty before I began telling stories about Dean's sexual exploits. Talking dirty had become part of our role play after I related the colorful language my roommate's conquests used when he drove his enormous cock into them for the first time. My cock twitched at my wife's promise to fuck my brains out. There was just one problem.
"Hermione, I just took 10 mg of melatonin so I could catch some sleep before my 4 AM alarm. I'm going to be toast in twenty minutes."
"Damn it, Harry. I'll just have to wake you up before your alarm so I can give you my anniversary present."
"I can hardly wait to unwrap my gift."
My wife was breathing hard from my finger fucking her sweet pussy. She was getting more excited by the second, but before I could get her off, Dean left the bathroom and turned off the bathroom light. I stopped driving my fingers into her horny pussy when the wet squelching sound became too obvious in the small room without the whine from the fan. My wife whimpered in my ear as she forced herself to stop grinding her sex on my fingers. I heard Dean open the dryer door.
"Damn, my clothes are still too wet to wear."
I said, "It's my fault. I washed your clothes in with mine. They should be dry in another three or four hours."
"Any chance you have something that will fit me? It wouldn't be neighborly for me to sleep in the nude."
"Sorry, Dean. Because of the heat, I always sleep in my boxers. None of mine are even close to your size."
I felt my wife's body shudder at the thought of sharing a queen size bed with the large naked man who had been part of her fantasies for months. It didn't matter that I would also be sleeping with her. In one of the wilder fantasies, I had made up. I told her how I restrained a reluctant blond while Dean fucked her six ways from Sunday. For all Hermione knew, Dean and I were planning to do the same to her. I wonder what she'd think if I told her the truth about how Dean and I had repeatedly taken the willing blond in a night-long threesome.
I stood up and yawned. "Guess I'll have to sleep in the middle to protect my wife's innocence."
I moved the coffee table to it's night time location and unfolded the sofa bed. Hermione and I never bothered with blankets in the overheated apartment. All that was on the bed was a pair of sheets. Dean crawled under the sheet and laid on his side, facing the bathroom. I remembered that he used to be a heavy sleeper. I hoped that he hadn't changed.
I went into the bathroom, brushed my teeth, and stripped to my boxers. I regretted my offer to take the middle as soon as I joined my old friend on the sofa bed. The thin mattress lay on top of worn-out springs. I was lying on top of a metal support rod that ran down the length of the bed. I struggled to get comfortable.
My wife used the bathroom next. Fortunately, when she used the toilet to pee, She was hidden behind the wall. I'm sure it was embarrassing enough that Dean could hear her piss. When she finished washing up, she hung up her towel and quickly pulled on a nightshirt that covered her down to the top half of her thighs. She slipped on clean bikini panties and joined us in bed after turning off the lights.
I thought about asking my wife to sleep in the middle but fell into a deep sleep.
#
I was having a fabulous dream about being stranded on a desert island. A young native girl found me half dead, and skillfully nursed me to health. For days, she fed me a thin broth and bathed my feverish body with fresh spring water. Once my fever broke, her ministrations became more sexual. I woke up every morning with a brown hand stroking my cock, and her red lips wrapped around my throbbing erection.
I opened my eyes and saw Hermione's mouth bobbing up and down my hard cock. Her eyes peered up at me as she drove her nose down to my dark pubic hair. Damn, she was taking all seven m inches of my cock without the slightest hesitation. I whimpered when she stopped.
I broke into a smile when she straddled my hips and directed my hard cock against the wet opening to her vagina. I knew for her to get that aroused, she must have been playing with her clit while she sucked on my cock. The room light wasn't dark, thanks to the bright marquee lights leaking through our thin curtains. It was light enough for me to see that my wife was naked when she took all of my cock into her sweet pussy with one quick thrust. I noticed she had shaved off the stubble of pubic hairs when she took her shower. My fingers savored the feel of her slick sex as they searched for her protruding clit. I closed my eyes and moaned. I was in heaven.
I heard someone snore and opened my eyes in a panic. My wife pushed me down and whispered.
"Its ok, Sweetheart. Your friend is deep asleep. Just relax. I'll do all the work."
I turned my head and saw Dean sleeping on his back. His eyes were closed, and he was softly snoring. Somewhere in the middle of the night, he had kicked the sheet off, exposing his naked body. Even flaccid, his cock was enormous.
I looked up at my gorgeous wife. Her naked body was glistening with sweat, and we'd barely begun. I knew this was going to be tricky. The cheap sofa bed rocked and squeaked every time someone so much as breathed. I already heard the springs singing softly as she slowly rolled her hips. I could see my hard cock moving less than an inch back and forth between her engorged pussy lips. Her generous breasts were gently undulating with the slow fuck.
My hands on her hips were eager for more. I cupped her mons and stroked my fingers through the short blond triangle of curly pubic hairs she'd left when she'd shaved her sex bare. When my fingers traced the path indicated by the small triangle, they found her hard clit waiting for attention. My wife jumped from the intense, unexpected stimulation and let out a cry. We both froze. I heard Dean stop snoring. My heart was pounding. I stared at the big black man for any sign he was aware of our clandestine activities. I breathed a sigh of relief when he rolled over on his side, facing away from us.
Chapter excerpt truncated at the edge.