by Ariel Tachna
“Enough foreplay,” Chris groaned. “Fuck me already.”
Jesse grabbed the lube and made quick work of preparing Chris, urged on by the constant stream of admonishments, obscenities, and groans coming from his lover. Another time, he’d draw this out, fucking Chris with his fingers until Chris couldn’t stand it anymore, but Jesse’s own patience had waned, and the need to seal their promises in the most carnal of ways spurred him to hurry.
When he replaced his fingers with his cock in Chris’s arse, he leaned up to find Chris’s lips again, echoing the driving of his hips with the movement of his tongue, claiming Chris, giving himself to Chris in every way he knew how.
Chris returned his devotions kiss for kiss, caress for caress, until Jesse thought he’d come apart at the seams, simply explode because his feeble skin couldn’t possibly contain this much joy, this much need, this much love.
Then Chris came apart beneath him, writhing on the bed as his body shook with release. Jesse bit his lip, trying to prolong Chris’s pleasure, but his own need had grown unbearable, and he gave in trying to stave off his climax.
He collapsed on top of Chris, all the upheaval and alcohol of the past few days catching up with him and leaving him feeling hollowed out and created anew.
Chris’s arms wrapped around his shoulders, keeping him in place when he would have rolled to the side. “Don’t leave.”
“I wasn’t leaving,” Jesse promised. “I was just going to stop squashing you.”
Chris draped his legs over the backs of Jesse’s thighs. “Squash away.”
JESSE TOOK a deep breath as he stepped out of his car shortly after lunch the next day. He and Chris had each driven their own car back to Lang Downs, but he’d kept Chris in sight through his rearview mirror the entire way.
“You’re back sooner than I expected,” Macklin said as he came out of the barn.
“I figured things out faster than I expected,” Jesse replied.
Macklin nodded. “There’s stalls that need mucking out.”
Jesse figured that was as close to a “welcome back” as he was likely to get given the way he’d run out, but he wasn’t just back for the season. He wanted to stay.
“I’ll get started as soon as I change my clothes, but first….” He took a deep breath and reminded himself this was what he wanted. Chris came up behind him and put his arm around Jesse’s waist. The simple gesture sent all the doubts scattering. “Do you have room for one more around here permanently?”
Macklin didn’t answer immediately, studying Jesse’s face, looking rather pointedly at Chris’s stance, and then at Chris’s face. “You’ll have to stay in the bunkhouse or move in with Chris and Seth. We gave the only empty house to Neil and Molly.”
“Is that a yes?”
“Store your kit and get to work. I expect my year-rounders to set a good example for the others. Chris, that goes for you too.”
He strode off before Jesse could stop him.
“That’s a yes,” Chris said, as if Jesse could really doubt it, but it made him smile.
“So where should I toss my kit?” Jesse asked Chris, not wanting to presume.
“In our house, of course.”
Jesse leaned over and kissed Chris quickly.
It was good to be home.
To Izzy, for keeping my boys from sounding too American, and to Nessa, Jaime, and Nicki, for indulging my obsessions as always.
One
CAINE NEIHEISEL looked up from the tax forms that were currently driving him batty when he heard a knock at the office door. It wouldn’t be Macklin because his lover and the foreman of Lang Downs wouldn’t bother knocking.
“Come in.”
“I’m sorry to disturb you, boss,” Neil Emery said, sticking his head in. “Do you have a minute?”
“Of course,” Caine said, setting aside the forms. “What can I do for you?”
“I need a favor. My brother Sam called. His wife kicked him out, and he doesn’t have anywhere else to go. He lost his job a year and a half ago, and I know it’s a lot to ask, but could he come here for a month or two? Just until he gets back on his feet?”
“The last time I checked, you and Molly had an extra room in your house. You don’t need my permission to have someone stay there.”
“I’ll have to go down to Yass to get him,” Neil said. “I can send him a bus ticket to get that far, but it’ll still mean taking at least a day off.”
“Just let us know when you’ll be gone so we can get someone to cover your chores.”
“I’ll leave Max with Chris. Chris has learned enough about dogs that he can use Max to help move the sheep down into the valley. I know it’s a bad time to be gone, but I can’t afford to pay for a hotel for him for long—”
“Neil,” Caine interrupted, “I’m not upset. He’s your brother. Of course you’re going to help him out. I don’t know how much luck he’ll have doing a job search from here, but even if all he does is recover from leaving his wife before figuring out how to go back to town, he’s still welcome. We can afford to feed one more.”
“He could maybe help you out in the office while he’s here,” Neil suggested. “He worked as an office manager for a small hardware store until the owners retired and closed the shop. At least he’d feel like he was contributing something instead of taking handouts.”
“We’ll see when he gets here,” Caine said, though the idea of having someone to help him figure out the logistics of Australian tax law and employee benefits regulations would be a huge help. Caine’s degree in business gave him enough background to make sense of the jargon, but the difference in laws had tripped him up more than once.
THREE DAYS later, Neil met his brother Sam at the bus station in Yass. The lines of stress and worry on his brother’s face made him frown. “You look like shit.”
“Good to see you too, arsehole,” Sam replied, hugging Neil more tightly than necessary.
“Come on,” Neil said, grabbing Sam’s sole suitcase. “Let’s get out of here. We’ve got a long drive ahead of us. Or do you want to eat something first?”
“How long?”
“Five hours or so,” Neil said, “and most of that is through the tablelands, where there’s nowhere to stop if you get hungry. I can shout you lunch, here or in Boorowa in an hour or so, if you don’t think you can wait until we get home.”
“Lunch would be good,” Sam admitted. “I… haven’t been eating well.”
Neil had noticed how gaunt Sam looked, but this confirmed it. “Kami, the station’s cook, will get you sorted in no time, but for now we can go to the Yass Hotel. It’s nothing fancy, but it’ll fill you up.”
“What about that one?” Sam asked, pointing to a small restaurant across from the bus station.
“We don’t eat there,” Neil said, his voice cold. “One of our jackaroos nearly got killed there last spring, and nobody lifted a finger to help him. His brother had to come running to the hotel for help.”
“In a town this size?”
“They didn’t take well to him being a poofter,” Neil explained.
Sam didn’t reply. Neil gritted his teeth when he saw the tense look on Sam’s face. He didn’t want to fight with his brother, especially when he was down and out, but Sam was going to have to keep his opinions to himself. Neil wouldn’t tolerate slurs against Caine and Macklin from his brother any more than he would from any of the other jackaroos on Lang Downs.
“So tell me about the station,” Sam said once they’d reached the Yass Hotel and had ordered lunch. “I mean, I know it’s kind of remote and I know you raise sheep, but that’s as far as it goes.”
“That’s about all there is to tell,” Neil said. “I told you about Molly when we got engaged. Everything else is pretty much what you’d expect from a station. Well, except Caine. He’s a Yank. He owns the station.”
“How did that happen?”
“His great-uncle founded the station. When he died, it passed to Caine’s mum in
the States, but she’s not young and wasn’t going to move here to run it, so Caine came. Last year at Christmas, she gave it to him outright. You know, I bet he could use a hand figuring out all the paperwork, taxes and shit. He’s got a head for business, but he’s still a Yank. You could keep your hand in.”
“If he’ll let me help,” Sam said with a sigh.
“Why wouldn’t he?” Neil asked. “You lost your job because the owners retired. You weren’t fired or laid off or anything like that. It’s not your fault you couldn’t find a new job.”
Sam shrugged. “He sounds like a good bloke. Is he married?”
Neil choked on his beer. He’d been hoping to put off this conversation until later, but short of lying, he didn’t see a way around it. “Last time I checked, two blokes can’t get married here. Macklin’s name is on the deed, though, and he moved out of the foreman’s house and into the big house a year ago, so I figure that’s close enough.”
“You work for a gay couple?”
“Sam, you’re my brother and I love you, but if this is going to be a problem, you need to tell me now so I can get you a hotel room in Yass.”
“No, it’s not a problem,” Sam said quickly. “I’m just surprised. We didn’t exactly grow up in a tolerant house.”
Neil shrugged. “Caine saved my life and nearly died doing it. And he did it after I found out he was gay and said every nasty thing I could think of to him. He’s earned my loyalty.”
The arrival of their food forestalled Sam’s reply, and he ate with such gusto that Neil didn’t press for more of a reaction. He wasn’t in the mood to listen to all the homophobic bullshit he’d grown up with. He was a different man now, a better one, he hoped. If Sam could just give Caine and Macklin a chance, he’d see they deserved his respect.
They finished eating and headed north toward Boorowa. “Do you need anything?” Neil asked. “Supplies of any kind? Once we leave Boorowa, there’s nowhere to stop.”
“No, I’m fine,” Sam said. “Alison let me keep everything of mine.”
“One suitcase?” Neil responded.
“I left some stuff with friends,” Sam said. “I didn’t figure I’d need suits on the station.”
“No, you won’t,” Neil agreed. “So tell me. What happened with you and Alison? Last time I saw you, I thought you were happy.”
“She wanted someone with a job, and I wanted…. It doesn’t matter what I wanted. She wanted out, and I’m not going to fight her.”
“Is there someone else?” Neil asked.
“I didn’t ask her,” Sam said.
“What about you?”
“No one that matters.”
“You slept around and it didn’t even mean anything? That’s low, Sam.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Sam insisted. “I….”
“You what, Sam?”
“I married her because it’s what Mum and Dad expected. I didn’t feel like I had a choice, and at least I liked Alison. We got along well enough, but that’s it. I never really loved her. I don’t know if she loved me, but she doesn’t anymore, and I’m fine with that. Dad’s gone. He can’t be disappointed in me now, so it doesn’t matter anymore.”
“What are you talking about? Why would you marry Alison if you didn’t love her? You could have found someone else.”
“You already said it,” Sam said. “It’s not legal for two blokes to get married.”
“You’re gay? Why didn’t you say something?” The words were out before Neil could consider them, the only thing he could think of to say in the wake of such surprising news. Sam had been married! Neil had never dreamed his brother might be gay.
Sam shot him a look of such incredulity that Neil flushed. “Sorry, that was stupid. Of course you didn’t say anything while Dad was alive, but you still didn’t have to get married. I didn’t. Not until I met the right girl.”
“Yeah, but you aren’t gay. You might not have met the right girl, but you knew you would someday. I didn’t have that, and you were gone. You didn’t have to listen to him constantly after you left, going on and on about the family name and being a man and getting married and having children. Thank God Alison and I decided to wait to have kids.”
“Did she know about you?”
“Not when we got married. After I lost my job and couldn’t find another one, things got… tense at home. Money was tight. I felt like a failure for living off her income. We fought all the time. We agreed to a trial separation nine months ago, with her helping me out with the rent, but I think that was almost worse, because she was supporting me completely. I wanted to feel good. I wanted to spend a few hours with someone who didn’t make me feel worthless.”
“So you did what? Hooked up with some random guys?”
“Yeah, pretty much,” Sam said. “It was stupid. I knew it when I did it, but it felt good too. They didn’t care that I didn’t have a job. They didn’t care that I was in the closet. They just cared that I’d let them do whatever they wanted to me. Alison kept on about getting a new job, always threatening to stop paying my rent if I didn’t get my act together. She actually had a lead on one, but it was with a cousin of hers, and he made it pretty obvious he’d only be hiring me out of pity. I turned down the job and told her I’d find somewhere else to live. There’s no way I could go back to that.”
“I wish I’d known,” Neil said. “I’d have tried to make it easier for you.”
“There’s nothing you could have done,” Sam said. “I had to fuck up to see how bad off I was.”
“So what now?”
“Now nothing,” Sam said. “I won’t fight Alison for anything when we can finally file for divorce in three months. She gets the house, the car, everything, because she’s paid for most of it, and I don’t want the black mark on my name if I ever get a lead on a job somewhere that might care if I’m gay.”
“There’s not a lot of opportunity for anonymous sex, gay or straight, on the station,” Neil warned. “There’s a couple of other jackaroos who are gay besides Caine and Macklin, but Chris and Jesse are shacked up, and the others will be leaving when the season is over in a few weeks.”
“So I’ll do without,” Sam said with a shrug. “It won’t be the first time.” He hesitated, then added, “I got enough of faceless fumbling this year. I’d rather do without until I can meet someone. I know that probably won’t happen on the station, and really, starting a relationship before I’m even divorced would be stupid, but I’d rather do without than feel like a cheap trick again.”
“I thought you said it made you feel good?”
“The sex, yes. Afterward, no,” Sam explained. “I don’t imagine you want details.”
“Not really,” Neil said with a grimace. “I might not let anyone say anything about Caine and Macklin, but I don’t need to know what goes on in their bedroom. Same goes for you.”
Sam’s smile was the most genuine Neil had seen since he’d picked his brother up at the bus station.
“Thank you.”
“YOU NEED to go to Melbourne this winter,” Devlin Taylor said, turning to face his younger brother Jeremy. “You need to find a good woman, settle down, start a family.”
Jeremy only barely managed not to roll his eyes at his brother across the breakfast table in the main house. Devlin refused to eat in the canteen with the jackaroos. He said it was “beneath him.” They had been through this discussion of his relationship status more times than he could count. He would get married when he was damn well ready—not likely to happen anytime soon since he wasn’t going to marry a woman and he couldn’t legally marry a man—and Devlin could take his meddling and matchmaking and shove them up his arse. “I was planning a trip to Sydney,” Jeremy replied, “but just for a week or two, to unwind a bit from the summer.”
“That’s not long enough to meet someone,” Devlin protested.
“Maybe because I don’t want to meet someone?” Jeremy retorted. “Not like that. We aren’t having this conversation again
.”
“Be careful, boy,” Devlin said as if he were Jeremy’s father, not his older brother. Granted, the twelve years between them meant he and Devlin had never been all that close, never had the shared childhood so many siblings drew on to bond as adults. “People will start talking. You’re thirty-four. That’s more than old enough to get settled down proper. You keep on like you are, people are going to start saying you’re like those pillow biters up at Lang Downs.”
“So what if they think that?” Jeremy replied hotly, not the least because it was true. He hated the term as much as he hated his brother’s homophobic rants, but he could hardly deny he was gay, even if he had conveniently forgotten to tell his brother that one important detail. “Armstrong runs a tight ship at Lang Downs, regardless of who he’s sleeping with, and when you had to fire that fucker who sabotaged their fences, Neiheisel let it go without pursuing you or him. They aren’t hurting anybody by being together.”
“No brother of mine is going to be known as a poofter!” Devlin roared.
“Better an honest poofter than a homophobic bigot who still can’t run a station as well as the ‘pillow biters’ at Lang Downs,” Jeremy shouted back.
Devlin’s angry bellow gave Jeremy the warning he needed to dodge the punch his brother sent flying in his direction. His own ire raised now, he countered with an uppercut of his own, catching his brother squarely under the jaw. Devlin staggered back, then narrowed his eyes as he came at Jeremy again. Jeremy tried to block the blow, but Devlin connected anyway. Jeremy rocked back, catching himself on the edge of the desk in Devlin’s office, and slammed his brother’s face into the wooden surface when Devlin lunged at him again. He had the briefest moment of relief that at least none of the jackaroos still on the station would see them fighting like this before Devlin was up again and plowing his fist into Jeremy’s gut. He doubled over and went for Devlin’s knees. When his brother went down, he stayed there, glaring at Jeremy with such hatred that Jeremy took a step back.