Below is chapter 4 of Global Entertainment.

This story is fictional; it does not depict real events or people, living or dead. It is copyrighted to me; it may not appear elsewhere in any format without my permission. It is a gay romance with several other genres involved in its sub-plots. It contains graphic sex between consenting adults who may not use condoms. Again, my characters aren't real; you are however, and you live in an age which has spawned diseases that kill through unprotected sex. If you are underaged (by definition of your country of residence) you may not legally read this story. Doing so only can hurt Nifty.

I'm relatively certain that a number of you are reading GE and really would like to hear from you. Your comments - favorable and unfavorable - help me to revise the chapters already written and to write those still ahead. They also show me that my story is being read. I'll respond to any who write (except for flames, of course). Please put Global Entertainment in the subject box in order that I know not to delete you along with the 30 + pieces of spam I receive every day. The address is Vichowel@aol.com.

I'm happy to announce that my sixth anthology has just been released by Starbooks Press and can be bought through Nifty's link with A Different Light Bookstore or from other bookstores. LOVERS WHO STAY WITH YOU has some of the most powerful gay erotic vampire tales ever published, including an extract from Confessions of A Vampire that first appeared on Nifty. I'm especially proud of the story in it by Davy Jones, a Nifty contributor. That's one strong story. Thanks Davy for contributing.

Dave MacMillan

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CHAPTER FOUR

Ned nuzzling my ear woke me up. "You okay?" he asked.

Through the fog of sleep that covered my brain, I felt the warm blanket of his concern wrapped around me. His chest was pressed against my back and his hard-on was throbbing between my legs.

I couldn't think of a time that I'd ever felt better. I was more alert, felt more alive than I'd ever been. And I was so damned horny. Like it'd been a month of Sundays.

I snuggled closer to him and, under the covers, lifted my leg over his. "Good," I answered, "but not as good as I'm going to feel in another minute." My hand moved behind my balls to find his dick and directed it to my entrance. "Give it to me," I told him as my own pole poked my bellybutton. "I need you in me now."

My other hand reached between us to grasp his nearest butt cheek and pulled him against me. I pushed my bottom down onto his dick. His arm went around my chest. I sighed as Ned's length passed through my sphincter and slid into me.

With his crotch pressed hard against my bottom and his dick as far in me as it'd go, he stretched to nuzzle my ear. I turned my face to meet his, arching back enough to allow our lips to meet. I opened my mouth for his tongue to enter.

As he kissed me, Ned began to move inside me. Long, slow strokes that made sure that that I felt all of him. I moved with him. My eyes closed.

I felt so safe. So loved. So complete.

My hand moved from his butt cheek to find its way to the back of his head. Ned's tongue continued to possess my mouth as his dick possessed my ass. My hard dick bounced and drooled from thigh to thigh to belly with our movements.

We rose gently, tranquilly. Out among the stars. Throughout the universe. For eternity.

I rode the endless pleasure he was giving me and held him close so that we were both riding it together. We were one.

We drifted somewhere past the farthest star. Angels joined us – naked, beautiful men – darting and dancing around us. They stayed with us, smiling their welcome to us, and called for us to create an even greater union than the one we already shared. One that would always contain us, no matter what threatened it.

We rode in that expanded union, oblivious to anything beyond us – the angels, Ned, and I.

Distant stars nova-ed. Those nearest us exploded. The currents of space and time buffeted us. The angels disappeared. Ned disappeared and I was rushing towards oblivion. I ceased being an eternal traveler and felt the pressure of tons of molten magma pushing into a volcanic explosion that would be greater than any the world had ever known.

I cried out as the first wave of lava rushed through me and into my dick. My ass muscles clamped hard around Ned's dick. My orgasm, fed by streams from throughout my body erupted out of me.

I gasped and knew I would never breath again. My lungs were seared. Every nerve and muscle in my body were locked in rigor mortis. My dick was already burned away as explosion after explosion erupted from it.

Ned held me to him, kissing me hard. Desperately. His cock enlarged and throbbed deep inside me to feed my eruption.

I came down slowly, gasping. And Ned still held me. His head, however, had tilted back. His mouth was open in a soundless cry.

We were both sweating like stuck pigs. His hair was matted as I knew mine had to be. We stared at each other. This was the first time our sex had ever been that intense. And I figured it had been as much so for him as it was for me.

"Jesus!" Ned moaned finally and fell back on his back.

"Yeah," I mumbled, still unsure of what had happened between us. And concerned about those angels who'd been riding right along with us.

I never had third parties to my orgasms. I didn't want to go down that road – ever. I liked things just the way they were – with just Ned doing the driving.

Yet, there had been five of those angels – perfect men, god-like even – and two of them had looked far too much like Johan and Jody for comfort. What the fuck was wrong with my head anyway – coming up with strange shit like that? I sure as hell didn't want flights of angels cruising along with me while I was cumming with Ned – Shakespeare or no Shakespeare. No way.

"We need a shower, Rick," Ned said, breaking into my thoughts. I've got to stink..." He grinned at me. "And you definitely do."

"Smart ass!" I growled but knew he was just trying to get my goat. I glanced around our room for the first time.

Our bed was large and canopied, its cranberry curtains tied back. The walls were covered with dark red wallpaper and the high ceiling was white. A window obscured by thick drapes spread across the wall nearest me, before it was a small table and chairs. A large fireplace covered half of the wall across from the foot of the bed. There was a door between it and the outside wall. Another door passed through the inner wall; there was a roll-back desk near the door that looked old.

"Think that might be a bathroom?" I asked, pointing to the door beside the fireplace.

"I don't know."

"Yeah? You weren't out like a light so that somebody had to put you to bed, were you?"

"I don't remember anything except the car stopping and you rubbing your butt over my dick as you got out."

I remembered that I'd been naked this morning when Ned and I had got involved. Ned had been naked, too. Oh, shit! Somebody had put me to bed all right – both of us. And they'd stripped us. I just hoped that was all they'd done.

"I slipped on ice getting out of the car, I think," I told him. "I just don't do ice all that well, I guess." I pulled away from him. I slid across the bed until I could drop my feet over the side.

I pushed off the bed and crossed the room to check the door by the fireplace. Fortunately, it turned out to have a shower along with a toilet and sink. "Voilà!" I said real campy. I looked back at Ned and wiggled my brows.

He pushed off the bed and, looking around the room, moved towards the door that would open up to the house. Something on the secretary beside the door caught his eye, however, and he stopped to pick up a sheet of paper.

"Love letter?" I asked, very archily.

"More like instructions," he answered. He looked up from the paper and scanned the wall beside the desk. "When we're awake, we can pull this..." He fingered a strip of thick bell cord that ran down the wall from the ceiling. "And Valentin will bring breakfast up to us. When we're ready, this von Muribor guy wants to meet both of us in the music room on the first floor."

"Music room?" I groaned. "I suppose that means I'm going to have to let you shower with me so we can get a move on." I made it sound as if I was grumbling. I wasn't. I loved to feel his body against mine any time, but wet had a special place in my heart.

Showered, shaved, and dressed, we both examined the bell cord that was supposed to call Valentin.

"How hard do you suppose we should pull it?" Ned asked.

I was more into history than he was and I'd read Thomas Hardy and other nineteenth century English writers. Given the lay-out of our bedroom, there was a distinct nineteenth century to it. Ned seemed to suppose that I had more knowledge in the area of bell cord and deferred to me on it.

"Not hard." I reached out and gave the cord a slight tug. I figured it was just my mind playing tricks with me but I thought I heard the faint tinkle of a bell ringing far off. "That should do it," I said and looked around, suddenly aware of how dark the room was. "Go open the curtains and let some light in here," I told Ned.

A moment later, the room was bathed in bright sunshine.

"Jesus! Come look at this, Rick," Ned called me, still staring out the window.

My arm went around his waist when I reached him. I looked out the window onto a sunlit snow-covered fantasy, my cheek against his bicep. And I looked out the window over the front yard.

I gazed out over a scene straight out of a Currier and Ives drawing. "Wow!" I cried. The whole front yard out to the street was covered with a layer of snow, and it looked to be a really thick, too. I'd never seen so much snow. It was beautiful

The trees in the little island in the middle of the street sagged under the snow. A couple of little kids in snowsuits were throwing snowballs at each other and looked like they were having fun. Their dad looked as if he was freezing.

"I wonder what they've got planned for us today?" I mumbled, wishing Ned and I could get a couple of hours free so we could play in the snow.

A knock at the door pulled both of us back to the here and now of our bedroom in our boss' house.

Ned opened the door and Valentin stepped in, carrying a large tray. He carried it across to the small table near where I was still standing at the window.

He waited a moment, then looked from me to Ned and back. "Please, meine Herrn, sit," he said in an accent I could have cut with a knife.

We sat and he served us. Attentively. I was suddenly nervous as hell, like I'd been seated in a five-star restaurant. He poured coffee and proceeded to lay out utensils. He dished out scrambled eggs on two plates before filling them up with thick cuts of still steaming ham. He placed a plate in front of each of us then, before retreating about two steps and stood watching us impassively.

Oh, yeah! A five-star restaurant all right. And five-star service as well, it seemed. I wasn't sure that my manners were good enough for this kind of treatment.

I took a moment to study the giant of a man who'd driven us from the airport the night before. He was massive, but the word "giant" already covered that. Though his buzz-cut hair was still black, I figured he was also pretty old. I guessed him for fifty, maybe even sixty.

I fumbled with my fork but managed to scoop up some egg. It took two tries but I finally got it in my mouth. "This is really good," I told Valentin before I remembered that my mouth was full. After that, I shut up and shoveled food. And tried to pretend it didn't matter whether I was doing it according to Miss Manners' etiquette. After all, I was just a south Georgia redneck. A hungry south Georgia redneck.

Ned didn't act concerned at all. He just shoveled.

After we'd finished eating, Valentin stacked dirty dishes and cups back onto the tray before lifting it. "You see the Prince now," he told us and started for the door. He didn't look back to see if we were following him.

I looked at Ned and he looked at me. We both shrugged and started after the giant. We were led down a wide corridor with rooms facing the street on the right and the railing of a staircase on the left. We followed him down the stairs and did a right face at the bottom to enter another corridor with rooms, this time, on either side. As darkened as the corridor was, it was pretty obvious it didn't catch much sun. He stopped halfway down and knocked on a door as we caught up with him.

"Kommen!" a baritone called from within. It was pretty muffled by the thick door and I wondered if the music room just might be sound-proofed. I'd just barely heard it from where we were in the corridor. It sounded a lot like the presence that had been in the bedroom last night. At least, it had the same commanding quality to it.

Valentin opened the door and stood back to let us enter. Both Ned and I stopped just at the doorway though, and my brother actually grabbed my hand as we both peered into what was at first glance total blackness.

|Please,| a voice said at my ear and I got the impression that the word was reconstructed so that I understood it. |Enter. We must talk.|

Both Ned and I looked to where Valentin had been standing. He wasn't there. Together, we looked back the way we'd come. He was halfway down the corridor with our breakfast tray.

"Rick Varnadore, is it not?" the same voice asked from beside me, this time speaking in heavily accented English.

My heart in my throat, I whipped around to face the doorway again; the blondest, palest, loveliest, most perfect man I'd ever seen was smiling back at me. I stared, my heart pounding away in my throat.

"And you are Ned Varnadore, are you not?" he asked as my brother turned to face him.

We nodded, me numbly. I'd thought Johan and Jody were perfect. This guy was perfection personified. They still had a sense of being a kid in their looks; this guy was all adult male – one that was still young with flawless skin. Like Johan and Jody, he didn't look like he'd ever known what a zit was.

"I'm Karl von Muribor," he said and smiled. "Please join me."

He didn't wait for Ned and me. Just like Valentin had upstairs, he assumed we'd follow him. Unlike our bedroom, though, the music room was black as we stepped into it.

The room wasn't pitch black, I realized as I tried to follow the man who was my boss. There was one candle on the far side of the room.

"Why don't we turn on some lights?" Ned grumbled and proceeded to crash into the chair I'd just stepped around. "Shit!" he growled, trying to catch himself.

I managed to find his arm and keep him on his feet.

"Please forgive me the darkness – all of us but Valentin," von Muribor said from right beside me.

I felt the sadness in his voice.

"We are condemned to be children of the night," he continued.

"What are you?" Ned grumbled, rubbing his knee. "Vampires?"

Von Muribor chuckled. "You would have me become an old wife's tale, Ned Varnadore? No, we all suffer from an extremely rare disorder. We can't stand much light at all."

"It's okay," I said, trying to make things feel all right again.

"But Ned is correct, we can have more light." Light flickered and grew brighter throughout the room as candle after candle magically lit itself.

Ned looked around us in amazement. I was pretty amazed myself until I realized that it was a trick. A good trick, I admitted, but still a trick. I was willing to bet that every candle in the room was electric. I wondered why our boss was trying to impress us with slight of hand.

"Is that better?" von Muribor asked.

"Yeah," Nick mumbled as he looked around the room suspiciously.

"Then, come. Let us be seated and become better acquainted." He led us to the grand piano and had us sit on the sofa beside it.

"Do you feel well today, Rick?" he asked, studying me carefully.

"Yes, sir," I told him, feeling embarrassed to be singled out. "It takes more than a knock on the head to keep me down."

He seemed as if he wasn't too sure of that but decided to leave it alone. Instead, he asked some questions about the flight, how well we'd rested, and other things you'd expect to ask your guests. Finally, he nodded and sat up straighter. Pretty obviously, the small talk had ended.

"As Jody so poorly tried to explain last night, Global Entertainment is going to undergo some changes in the next several months," he said. "Emil, Tom, and I would like to think that you two will be intimately involved with those changes."

"Changes?" Ned asked.

"Intimately involved?" I asked.

Our boss laughed. Warm, kind, caring – they washed over me with his laugh.

"We will begin distributing our sex videos in America – that's safe again. And we're in the process of developing an all-gay television channel to be beamed around the world via satellite. One or the other of those two enterprises are where we see the two of you."

Ned and I both sat forward on the sofa, all ears.

Von Muribor laughed again. "You're enthusiastic, that is good. But we will wait to discuss details until tonight when we can all be together. I have asked Valentin to set up the entertainment center in the lounge for your use this afternoon."

"Entertainment center?" I cried, thinking of all that snow outside. "You want us to watch vids?"

"Yes. Those one or both of you have been in through computer enhancement. There are also the cds of all five years of the Showtime television series, Queer As Folk. It is important that you watch some of both..." He turned to me and smiled. "You and your brother can also have an hour to play in the snow as well." He chuckled. "I doubt you'll want to play much longer than an hour – you'll become quite chilled quickly enough. Just don't go exploring beyond the gates without taking Valentin with you. Washington is still a dangerous city."

Though it hadn't been said, there was a distinct sense that we'd been dismissed. I figured that I could take a hint and stood. Ned looked up at me as if he thought I was nuts. He didn't see von Muribor rise to his feet.

"We'll meet with you again tonight?" I asked.

"Of course. Seven should be a perfect time." He turned to Ned and offered him his hand.

Ned took the hint and stood.

Von Muribor then offered his hand to me.

It struck me what the proper form of leave-taking as far as this man was concerned was. I grasped his cold hand, clicked my sneakered heels, and bowed slightly but stiffly to him. "Until seven then, my Prince," I said.

I could feel Ned's eyes burning a hole in the back of my head all the way across the room.

"Where did you learn that from?" he growled low as I held the door to the music room for him. He didn't see every candle in the room blow out at the same time. I wasn't sure I wanted to either, but I did know it didn't mean Ned and I were in danger.

"That's just the proper way to say good-bye to a Prince," I told him as I shut the door. I heard the opening strands to a waltz as the Prince began to play the piano. "Come on," I told Ned, "let's find the lounge. I want to watch you fuck all those pretty boys."

"Yeah," he growled and cuffed my ear, "and I wanted to stuff snow down the back of your pants."

"Only, if I can do the same to you first, boy," I snapped back and hurried to get ahead of him. Some things just were not funny and freezing a guy's butt off was not one of them.