Lola Dances

The following is an excerpt from Lola Dances by Victor J. Banis. Brian and Joshua have spent the winter in a mining camp in Butte, snowed in.

It was near spring. A mighty Chinook had swept down from the mountaintop, scattering woodpiles, overturning privies and turning banks of snow into rivers of mud that still froze over from time to time or got covered with new snow.
Brian came home later than usual from a game of poker at Angelo's. Bored and restless with waiting for spring to arrive, Joshua had passed on going with him this particular occasion, and had spent the afternoon trying to make some order out of the mess that was their cabin. Months of close confinement had meant piles of unwashed clothes, dishes and pots that had been used and, never washed, used again, until they were crusted over with remnants of previous meals.
"There's an Indian squaw in town," Brian said when he'd shed his buffalo robe. He got himself a glass of whiskey and came to warm himself in front of the fire. "Got in yesterday, with a couple of miners from Helena.”
"Is that so?" Josh said, more interested than not. There hadn't been any newcomers in the camp since the fall, before the snows had come so heavy.
"Calls herself Happy Rabbit," Brian said. "Seems like mostly what keeps her happy is selling her pussy." He chuckled. "She was sure one happy injun last night, I'd say. Reckon half the boys in town took their turn."
"I guess you were helping keep her happy?" Josh asked with a grin.
"I did my share." Brian grinned back at him. "Been a while since anybody around here got any tail. Any real tail, I mean to say. Thing is, she's about the ugliest woman I ever seen, and I don't expect she's had a bath since last summer. But it's not a bad piece of ass if you keep your eyes closed the whole time and don't breathe too deep. You ought to give her a poke. Might make you happy too. Sure did me."
Joshua gave him a wry smile. "I think I'll just take your word for that," he said.
Brian gave him a long, hard look. "How long's it been, anyway, since you fucked a woman?"
Josh shrugged. "I haven't been counting. Long enough, I suppose."
"Well, then? What's wrong with fucking this one?"
"Brian, I'm happy—well, no, make that contented—with what I got. Seems to me like it works good enough. For the time being anyway."
"So, what is it then that you think you got, that makes you so contented?" Brian asked, and there was a note of challenge in his voice.
Josh looked hard back at him. They had never actually talked about what they had been doing together for many weeks, but even so, he thought by now they were both surely past pretending it didn't happen. Besides, he was tired of waiting for Brian to say what he wanted to hear. Maybe Brian needed a little push.
"This," he said aloud, "If you didn't know," and in a sudden quick movement, he crossed the room to where Brian was standing, took him by the shoulders, and, to his surprise at least as much as Brian's, kissed him, tenderly.
For all the fucking they had done throughout the winter, it was the first time their mouths had ever come together. At first, Brian stood frozen, unresponsive. Josh might have been kissing one of those Indian totem poles. And, really, he wasn't even sure why he had done it, except that they never had, and it seemed funny not to after everything else they had done together, after six months of fucking one another nightly, and some afternoons too. It wasn't like there was a lot else to do to pass the time when you were snowed in.
Then, as if of their own accord, Brian's arms came around him, and Brian began to kiss him back, not at all gently, the way Josh had kissed him, but hard, fiercely, and Josh, initially surprised in turn, soon returned it in kind, mouths and teeth grinding together and tongues searching frantically, their bodies writhing against one another, so close they might have been a single entity, and trying to get closer yet.
They parted just long enough to shed clothes, each pausing in his own disrobing to take some piece of clothing off the other, neither of them able to get naked fast enough to suit either themselves or one another. Both as hot as if this were their first time and they were just now discovering the other's body.