Blowing Off Steam

by Karen Mercury

  “You like that, don’t you?” She sneered at Rushy. “You like having this big, fat dildo up your virgin ass.”

  Dildo? Is that what that was? Field had heard of such things. Now Rushy was uttering in a strangled tone, “Land’s sake, you wildcat! Let me spend!” He pulled himself up by the bonds around his wrists, and every time Calliope slapped his massive prick, he flinched, driving himself back down onto the ivory dildo.

  Field couldn’t help himself. Falling to his knees, he plastered his open mouth to the tight ball sac, taking control of the necktie cinched at the base of Rushy’s cock. Snorting and grunting with an entire testicle in his mouth, Field worried the whole morsel like a pig at a trough. Slathering the flat of his tongue against the mottled, hairy surface, he kept pace with Calliope’s screwing of Rushy’s asshole. He knew he sounded like a disgusting pig, and he didn’t care. He had his face buried in the sinewy, musky crotch of the most desirable man on the Sacramento River.

  “Good God, people!” Rushy roared. “Calliope, you bitch,” he seethed. “I’ll have my revenge on you.”

  This startled Field, but Calliope’s response was angelic. “Nevertheless, notwithstanding, tadpole. I think you’ve met your match in your partner.”

  Out of one eye, Field saw the three of them in the mirror. Him on his knees in a subservient position, slaking his thirst at this delicious trough. Calliope shoving a polished elephant’s tooth up Rushy’s ass. And Rushy, as rangy and brawny ever, bucking and snorting like a caged bear. That delicious prick swinging in the breeze, begging to be sucked.

  So Field did. Gripping it about the base with the silk necktie in his fist, Field nuzzled the shiny mushroom head of it. He inhaled, spearing it down his throat so deeply that he choked, and Rushy really did howl then, a long, drawn-out screech of pained ecstasy.

  Field breathed through his nostrils, suctioning the cock in and out of his throat until he felt Rushy’s entire body shudder. Field, clutching Rushy’s poor molested ass, felt great convulsions shake the pilot. Then all at once gushers of hot, salty jism flooded Field’s throat.

  Damnation. Field struggled to swallow it all, but he was floundering, drowning in the flood of semen. It had been his dream for weeks now to suckle this stupendous prick, and now he was fighting to gulp down a veritable deluge of jism.

  Rushy had gone strangely silent when he began to erupt, but now he exhaled in a great whoosh of breath. “You bumsucker!” he snarled as his hips jerked against Field’s face. “Suck me, you sassy old rascal!”

  Field had to detach to take a few deep breaths, and he milked the remaining spurts of fluid from the big, drooling penis. He fell to sucking and licking the lacy curls of Rushy’s pubic mound while Calliope slowed her corkscrewing of his ass, and everyone as one unit breathed slower.

  When their panting had died down to a vague hiss, Calliope collapsed against the washstand, tossing the ivory implement into it. Leaning forward, her head lolled on a weak neck. “Whew,” she said.

  Field licked his way up Rushy’s torso as Rushy sucked in air and flinched.

  “You miserable old critter!” Rushy roared.

  “Oh dear!” Calliope cried. The seductress was gone, and now it was only the El Dorado chef who flung herself on Rushy to untie him. “I’m so sorry, my possum! Here, let me get this knot. Hm. This is a strange new knot. I don’t appear to be able to…”

  It was Field’s revenge now, to kiss Rushy fully on the mouth, licking his mouth with his own jism-coated tongue. And Rushy did seem to enjoy tasting himself and saw nothing wrong in sucking on his partner’s tongue in return.

  “Oh, you boys!” Calliope sounded vexed. “All you can think about is groping.”

  Field blindly reached behind his neck and untied the knot. But he took his time doing it.

  Chapter Twelve

  Rushy was bending over a cask of beer when someone clutched him between the legs.

  Of course his first impression was that the hand belonged to Field, so naturally he spread his feet a bit farther apart on the deck as his cock elongated, and only pretended to fiddle with the cask’s leaking bunghole.

  The hand fondled his balls ardently, stiffening his prick instantly. Land’s sake. You just can’t keep a good man down, can you? “Listen, Field. I—” When a rigid member was pressed against his asshole, Rushy had the sinking feeling it wasn’t Field. This fellow wasn’t hung nearly as well. Straightening, he spun about and was facing a passenger he knew as Herr Bloch, some lumber merchant or other, a dried-up old fellow who traveled with his wife and child. Rushy had never seen Bloch hug up his wife or child before, but he sure was full of devilment when it came to handling Rushy’s ball sac.

  “Bloch!” was all he could think to say.

  Bloch leered knowingly and stood uncomfortably close. “Captain Wakeman,” he oozed. “I’ve been watching you closely. I’ve admired the way you handle that engineer, and your lack of circumspection regarding such matters.”

  What the hell did “circumspection” mean? Wasn’t that when they knifed off the penis’s foreskin? Such a thought made Rushy’s cock shrivel even further than the sight of Bloch’s wizened face. “What ‘matters’?”

  Bloch squiggled his bushy eyebrows. “Shall we say, I have been enjoying the shows you’ve been putting on when you snuggle that handsome engineer. Many of the merchants have enjoyed these shows. Many merchants wish it was them in the stead of that engineer, being handled with such…precision.”

  Without thinking, Rushy walloped Bloch into the middle of next week. The lumber merchant, being rather slight, actually went flying over the beer cask, landing sprawled on a goat. The goat got up on another goat, and there was a general melee of barnyard animals there on the main deck.

  Rushy felt bad, so he went and took the merchant’s hand to help him up. “Sorry about that, Herr Bloch. It just makes my blood boil when people think I’m some kind of free and easy fellow they can just manhandle, just cause I…” He brushed some dried goat shit from Herr Bloch’s sleeve, but his spectacles had been knocked askew and mangled. Rushy sighed.

  Bloch touched his jaw for signs of breakage. “I understand, Captain Wakeman. Many of us just assumed you were free and easy because you seem to enjoy rousing the passengers with your displays of animal ability.”

  Rushy had noticed he’d been pawed and fingered quite a bit lately. Even in the dining room, standing with hands behind his back to make small chatter with some muckety-mucks, passing hands would experimentally handle his ass. When Rushy would turn around, there would be some stoic businessman with a mortifying lump in his trousers, all goggle-eyed with knowing. The lower classes tended to travel only one way because they couldn’t afford to constantly go up and downriver, but even there while threading his way through the masses Rushy’s prick had been squeezed several times. And once he had been called to see to an “ill” miner who turned out to have his greasy rod in his paw. They had perhaps heard of his previous reputation for humping deckhands in not very darkened corners, so Rushy assumed that was the explanation.

  Field had claimed this only happened to him when the culprit was ol’ Stan Sitwell, who had developed quite a puppy love for the hapless engineer. But now Rushy thought perhaps he should be more discreet, if only to avoid tormenting these deviant merchants, or making them go out of their heads with lust.

  He tipped his cap. “I apologize for that, Herr Bloch. The glory ain’t mine. Rest assured it won’t happen again.” Rushy was a businessman himself. He must maintain civil relations with his passengers.

  He turned to leave, but Bloch was saying, “Captain Wakeman. I must submit another challenge to you of a different nature.”

  Rushy stilled. A challenge. He would never walk away from one of those.

  “Captain Bixby of the Jack Hayes claims he has a new engine, better than the El Dorado’s.”

  “Oh, is that so? You’re associated with that lowdown cur from the bottomless pit, Clive Bixby? He’d claim he remodeled his mother�
�s boudoir if he thought it would impress anyone.”

  “Even so. He is looking forward to racing you back to Sacramento today at four.”

  Rushy struck off, cursing to himself. “That lowdown river rat Bixby! We’ve got four Celestial stiffs with opium coming out their ears, and he wants to challenge me to a race! Well, Mr. Haight told us not to race. Still. How can I ignore his challenge iffin he’s going to be well-nigh insulting my manliness?”

  Shoving past a few Kanakas diving for items that had fallen overboard, Rushy took note of a lone Celestial standing by the starboard rail. He’d seen this fellow on the downriver trip from Sacramento yesterday. Normally, Celestials with their long pigtails and high-collared jackets gathered together in clumps, but this fellow stood out for the loud scotch bonnet with a leather visor, which he wore rakishly set to one side of his head. Funny that a peewee riceman would be wearing such an ostentatious hat, and Rushy immediately struck for Stan Sitwell to tell him to keep an eye on that fellow.

  He looked for him, of course, wherever Field Trueworthy could be found, and right now that was the port stern rail. Calliope in her chef’s apron smoked a cigarro, and they appeared to be assessing any advantages the Jack Hayes might have over them.

  “With Bixby’s old engine,” Field was telling Calliope, “he’d have to stop constantly to ‘wood up.’ But if he’s really got this grand engine, that’s a new wrinkle. He could go as far as we can without wooding up.”

  “But the fact remains,” protested Calliope, “the Jack Hayes is only four hundred fifty tons, and only a hundred and fifty feet long.”

  “That might not matter,” said Rushy, joining the group. “Right, Field?”

  “Right,” Field agreed. Was it Rushy’s imagination, or had Field’s eyes sparkled more brightly ever since their engagement in Calliope’s stateroom? “If the new engine has enough horsepower, it won’t matter that her wheels are smaller than ours.”

  “So you’ve heard about Bixby’s challenge.”

  “Yes,” said Field. Leaning against the rail like that with his ankles casually crossed, one could plainly see the outline of his long, delectable prick, sluggishly at half-mast. Rushy reached out to button Field’s frock coat, although it was blazingly hot outside as usual. Field regarded Rushy with his amiable, soft eyes.

  Last night, Field hadn’t been so gentle and mild-mannered. Rushy had seen a new savage side to the docile engineer when he’d looked upon a bound Rushy with wolf’s eyes. Rushy had never been as stimulated in his entire life as when he’d stood there exposed and defenseless while a freshly empowered Field tickled his tool with that infernal ostrich plume. The fire and zeal that suddenly enflamed Field’s eyes, especially when he nudged his middle finger up Rushy’s ass and wriggled it about, told Rushy that Field was more than an androgynous Miss Molly, what he’d suspected at first. Field had stroked Rushy’s gland with more passion than Rushy had ever fingered any molly boy.

  No, there was a masculine passion to Field’s desire for cock. That was evident by the enthusiastic gusto with which Field fell to his knees and suckled Rushy to orgasm. No mere molly boy would gulp down a prick with such pure rapturous desire. And when he’d told Rushy he’d love nothing more than to kneel between his thighs and screw him up the ass, Rushy had been filled with a tingling excitement and also dread.

  Calliope was right—his ass was virginal. It had never been ravished before. He’d always been the one to do the ravishing, the raw, carnal, heedless humping of two men grunting in a corner, or over the rail on a pleasant day at anchor. Rushy supposed he’d never allowed that because it signified weakness, subservience. And he’d never been more subservient than when Field Trueworthy, mechanical genius of the river, had titillated his penis with that damned plume that was probably one of Calliope’s hat decorations—and when she had defiled his ass with that ivory tool that had felt so damned good.

  Like a short, fat prick. Fucking him up the ass.

  He’d never been smacked before, either. Field’s sharp, stinging slaps roused him till he was out of his head with the need to spend, especially when Field paddled his bursting balls. Rushy’s prick had never felt so tight and saturated with semen. That Field, he was a fellow to be reckoned with.

  Field now said, “I was thinking of sending Stan Sitwell over there to investigate the new engine. That good-for-nothing jackass Bixby would recognize Cincinnatus.”

  Calliope inserted, “Or have Stan make some kind of booby trap.”

  “No!” Rushy insisted. “I’ll win this race fair and square. Even if I have to shoot out their boilers with a Sharps rifle.”

  “Well,” said Calliope wanly, “that isn’t entirely ‘fair and square’ now, is it?”

  “Not really,” Rushy had to admit. “But I can’t rightly lose a race. Not after having established such a grand rep on the river.”

  “Let’s just not race him,” Field suggested. “He wants to start at four. We can malinger. Say we’re waiting on a shipment of something.”

  Calliope pointed. “Then the passengers will be soreheads. You know how fast word gets around. And you can’t avoid this Clive Bixby fellow forever.”

  Rushy exploded. “Damn it all to hell!” In frustration, he walked in circles about the deck. “We have to race that bastard!”

  “We can’t, Rushy,” said Field. “Remember what Soquel Haight said.”

  Calliope said, “Who cares what Soquel Haight said? Everyone races on the river. It’s part of the entertainment the passengers pay for. They know the El Dorado will win and they want to get nice and wallpapered and watch our rivals get whipped.”

  Field explained patiently. “Haight will find out in a jiffy that we were racing. Hundreds of passengers can testify to that.”

  Rushy wanted to wallop Field in his frustration, but he only feebly punched the rail. “By Saint Michael, Field! I’m with Calliope. We can’t allow Haight to dictate our decisions as owners. Just because we’re carrying a few rancid stiffs for him, can he tell us who to race?”

  “Bully for you, Rushy!” Calliope seemed to admire this decision.

  “I think he said it,” Field opined, “because the more we race, the more wallpapered people will get. Maybe he’s afraid someone will stumble over one of the bodies. And I heard a story about someone in Sucker Flat who just dug up a body to get a ring off its finger.”

  “Besides”—Calliope pointed with her cigarro—“how can you be sure old Chan Ho from Kwangtung isn’t going to recognize one of the bodies as his dead uncle and start mourning over it?”

  Rushy agreed. “Or worse, give it a burial at sea?”

  “Right,” said Calliope with finality. “Drop it over the rail over in Steamboat Slough. I mean, where’d these bodies come from, anyway? They must be someone’s relatives.”

  Rushy said, “I think they came from the morgue, but that’s beside the point.”

  “The Chinese don’t have a morgue,” Field said.

  Rushy continued, “Either way we’re taking risks, Field. Racing or not racing, burials at sea or whatnot. We’re taking big risks. If we suddenly stop racing, that alone might look mighty suspicious.”

  “Speaking of Celestials,” Calliope said, with a brighter expression to her voice. “I was thinking, captains. I could use some help in the galley. At least a couple of new texas-tenders, someone to serve cocktails in the saloon and also help serve dinners, set tables, wash dishes. Having someone to prepare the food, chop up vegetables and suchlike, would also be a big help. Someone with horse sense.”

  Field regarded her thoughtfully. “That’s probably true. Maurice can’t do everything himself, and the few texas-tenders we have are worthless jacklegs.”

  Rushy was glad to change the subject and would gladly help Calliope since she had just stuck up for him. “Sure. It’d make sense to get more help here in San Francisco, though. Who were you planning on hiring? Some Spaniards?”

  “No…” Calliope spoke with some uncertainty now and wouldn’t lo
ok anyone directly in the eye. She looked out to the tiny bird-covered island of Alcatraz. “I was thinking of hiring some Celestial gals.”

  “Celestial gals?” Rushy thought. “That would be very neighborly of you, Calliope, seeing as how we do business with them. One problem. Most, if not all, of those womenfolk are treated like prisoners. What riceman is going to let his wife work on an American boat?”

  Calliope twirled a tendril of hair around her finger. “Well. I was thinking more like ricemen…ricewomen gals who are here without husbands, who are working near Fay Chie Hong alley. Remember, Field? On our way back from Kwok Lee’s, we stopped in an alley—”

  “I sure do,” said Field with a mixture of pride and shame.

  Rushy’s interest was piqued. “This alley. Is it by any chance the alley of the hookers? How are you going to get them out of there without a hundred ricemen chasing you down Clay Street with their swords?”

  “I’ve thought about that,” said Calliope. “Maybe approach them at night and bring them here in darkness. Obviously, I’ll only take qualified women who want to come.”

  Rushy knew they didn’t need the additional attention that stealing Chinese hookers would bring, but since Calliope had stuck up for him on the subject of racing, he had to help her achieve her altruistic goal. She wanted to help some downtrodden hookers raise their station in life, and that was admirable. “All right, maybe on our next trip. We don’t have time today. We’ve got to get everything in tip-top shape for this race. Goddamned Clive Bixby isn’t going to best us.”

  Field smirked. “Boilers blow up and be damned, right, Rushy?”

  “Right. Calliope, did you get all of those raisins and apples you needed for those mincemeat pies?”

  Calliope opened her mouth to reply, but a baffling incident took place then. Around the corner of the hold came Sam Brannan, hearty and hale as always, actually whistling a happy tune. Field instantly stood in front of Calliope as though to hide her, and Brannan greeted the captains.