Page 8 of Blowing Off Steam

“Shall we take turns?” Rushy asked.

Field looked fondly at the pilot. “Nah. You can have their best girl. You’re the one who steered the boat past all those underwater snags I never would’ve known about.”

“But I never would’ve made it in under six hours if you hadn’t built the best newfangled engine in California.”

Brannan couldn’t find Catalina, so Rushy had to settle for the next best, a jaundiced, bony gal who looked like she’d just come through Panama from the bland, nauseated expression on her face. But Field’s gal was even less appealing—tolerable healthy women being at a premium in California—so Rushy went off with a mighty grave air to a second-story cubicle. Rushy and Field glanced at each other before diving behind their doors made of blankets.

“Let the frolics begin,” Field said lustily, squiggling his eyebrows.

Rushy wished Field would be thinking of him when he screwed his hooker, but the fact of the business was, Field would probably rather be masturbated by an eight-fingered leper than touch another man. That was the way of the mainstream world, the world that didn’t steam through the byways of malarial swamps, looking at the same monotonous caved-in fireman’s face for weeks on end. Rushy had frolicked with many a strapping river man, where women were especially rare and legendary. But on land, “up the hill” as river men called anywhere other than a boat, such things were viewed with horror and disgust.

Rushy humped his gal about as well as a sewn-up, exhausted riverboat pilot could be expected, thinking of Field’s pointy Greek nose. He wondered how Field’s spiky chestnut hair would feel between his fingers—he had not dared think of it brushing his inner thighs yet. The whore must have left the enclosure soon after, but the downstairs din prevented him from drifting off. He was accustomed to sleeping with the softly chunking paddlewheels, not the blare of a hundred yee-hawing miners.

It wasn’t long until a soaked Field Trueworthy came reeling into his cubicle, waving a bottle and leaning on his hooker.

“Hey, partner! Avast! Stop engine and kill all smoke!” Field got tangled in the hanging blanket and tripped over his own ankle.

Always fast on the uptake, Rushy kneeled on the cot to catch his partner. Gratitude surged through him when they tumbled back onto the cot. Field seemed content to stay where he sprawled against Rushy’s bare chest, cradled between his thighs. The fuzzy sensation of that soft spiked hair against his collarbone was enough to swell Rushy’s naked cock against the small of Field’s back. The sudden reality of just what he’d been dreaming of was almost too much, and he was even a bit glad that Field had put his clothes back on before stumbling in.

The hooker merely sat on a stool and unscrewed the bottle from Field’s hand while Rushy allowed his palm to caress the spiked head, his nude thigh rocking the riverboat captain slightly side to side, as if they were on the boat. He hoped Field was too soused to feel his erection bulging against his tailbone.

“Ain’t it precious being the lions of the day in Sacramento?” Rushy drawled.

The hooker said, “If you’re the lions of the day, why don’t you buy a sheep for the chef to cook? Let’s have a regular husking frolic.”

“We should buy a sheep for our own chef,” Rushy said soothingly, reveling in the feel of the thick, satiny locks between his fingers. He got a fistful of that hair and feared he’d ejaculate against the flannel shirt without doing more than rocking his leg against the virile creature sprawled so carelessly in the cradle of his thighs.

“Ah,” sighed Field, as though the manly plane of Rushy’s chest was his mother’s bosom, his hands clasped over his abdomen. “Our chef lit out for the gold mines.”

“What?” Rushy started to sit upright but immediately relaxed back against the wall. “Buck Parsons took a French leave? In our grandest moment of glory? That miserable critter from the bottomless pit.”

“Yes,” Field agreed limply. “Who will serve us our cheese platters with olives and anchovies?” They had often enjoyed sitting in the saloon on the burgundy velvet chairs next to the log cabin mural, eating what Field called “hors d’oeuvres.” In this way Rushy had discovered that Field had a deceased wife and a nipper named Benjamin who lived with Field’s sister in Amsterdam, New York.

Rushy massaged Field’s scalp with his fingertips, pleased to see gooseflesh rise on Field’s forearms. The engineer rolled his hips as though to mash a more comfortable indentation in the bug-encrusted mattress. It had been a long time since Rushy had held such a vigorous stallion between his thighs, and his prick threatened to spurt against the squirming of the captain’s rigid back muscles. Was it his load of sin, having tussled with many deckhands in darkened cabins, that had plunked six feet of seductive treat between his thighs? He forced himself to the subject at hand. “We can’t start back for San Francisco without a chef.”

Field shrugged, his gliding shoulder muscles against Rushy’s tight nipples sending shivers deep into his abdomen. “No matter. I’m sure there are dozens of acceptable cooks downstairs right now, eager to work for such victorious sailors as us.”

Rushy inhaled and exhaled mightily. His fingertips slid lower to tickle the nape of Field’s neck, damp and sticky. “Hell. You might not be aboard long enough to tell the bow from the stern. Riverboat life is needless torture. You’ll be disgusted before we get back to San Francisco.”

Field squirmed his torso again, as though he knew he was creating the real torture, rubbing his manly physique against his friend’s naked, panting one. “I’ll be here for many journeys to San Francisco. Hell, if it’s so damned rough I can get off.”

“The hard thing will be trying to get enough sleep to stay alive. But I don’t know why you even want to try. Cincinnatus is the only reliable hand who can relieve us of our duties. We could also use another fireman.”

To Rushy’s intense shock, Field stirred then. He slithered his back up Rushy’s torso, rubbing his nipples so raw Field could not fail to have noticed Rushy’s erection pulsating against his hip. Turning his head so their noses were just inches apart, Field said, “You can show me how to tie one of those dandy cravats you’re always wearing.”

Rushy didn’t know and didn’t particularly care what Field was talking about. For within the next fraction of a second, it was Field himself who planted his soft, whiskey-tasting lips on Rushy’s. Snaking his hand around the back of Rushy’s neck, Field parted his lips and snuck the tip of his tongue between Rushy’s teeth. The rush of lust was so overwhelming that Rushy dared to lunge his erection against Field’s hip, and he clasped his thighs tighter around the precious morsel of manliness.

They kissed as Rushy knew two men were prone to kiss, sloppily, with a great nibbling at the lips and snorting against the side of each other’s faces. When Rushy squeezed a handful of the velvety, pointy hair, a warm, happy fragrance of hay emanated, tickling Rushy’s nostrils. Field smelled like a bale of hay—not wood smoke from the firebox, as Rushy knew he himself always emanated. No, he tasted like whiskey and saltwater, and Rushy licked the underside of his tongue while aggressively thrusting his stiff prick against Field’s hip.

“Where are you going?” it sounded like the prostitute said. While that didn’t make any sense, Rushy didn’t care a damn, and the tiny breeze that wafted past his forearm told him she was leaving the cubicle. He was too overwhelmed with the sensation of kissing this desirable man, and the idea they would become lovers was too much to bear in his oiled condition.

Now he found the grit to clutch the side of Field’s admirable neck then slide his fingers beneath the first couple of shirt buttons. When his palm slid over the brawny pectoral to pinch an erect nipple, though, Field withdrew, breaking the kiss.

Field sat upright and looked around, as though surprised to find himself in a shabby cell partitioned off by only a calico sheet from the next miserable critter who slapped his lumpy, greasy body up against the person of an apathetic hooker. Why was Field altering his tune so sudden?

When Field stood, Rushy quickly covered his erection with a piece of the filthy sheet. He was so stunned by Field’s sudden rejection his cock was already rapidly deflating. “What’s wrong, partner?”

Rubbing his face, Field went to gaze out the sooty window. “Wow,” he breathed. “I must be bodaciously drunk as a fiddler’s bitch.”