Cherish the Land (29 page)

Jason laughed and lifted his hips to rub his arse against Seth’s cock. “It will be as soon as you move. I want you inside me. Now.”

Seth pressed forward, fighting the lingering resistance, and then his cock popped through and he was inside Jason. He couldn’t breathe. It was so much more than he’d imagined. He thought he might shake apart from the import, the overpowering intimacy of the moment. Ten years he’d waited for this, and now he had it. He had the whole fucking shebang—house, dog, lover, love of his life. He was
home
.

“I’m not going to last long,” he warned Jason.

Jason grunted and clenched around him. “Then you’d better make the most of it.”

Seth tried to summon a glare, but he was sure he only managed to look like a besotted fool. He didn’t care. Jason knew Seth was totally gone over him. He thrust experimentally, trying to find a rhythm and range of motion that would make Jason feel as good as Seth already felt. Jason grabbed his shoulders and tilted his head up for a kiss. Seth didn’t know if he could do both at once, but he wouldn’t deny Jason a kiss. He lost himself in Jason’s mouth, lingering over the caress until Jason smacked his arse.

“Move.”

Seth buried his face in the crook of Jason’s neck as he began to thrust again. Jason clenched around him again, his chest heaving beneath Seth’s. A couple more thrusts were enough to push him over the edge. His whole body spasmed as he climaxed.

Jason’s cock pressed against his abdomen. Feeling guilty, Seth rolled to the side and wrapped his hand around Jason’s erection. “I’ll do better next time,” he promised as he stroked the thick shaft.

“You’re fine,” Jason said hoarsely. “Just keep doing that and loving me.” Seth obliged. It only took a few strokes for Jason to come as well, spattering Seth’s hand with hot fluid. Seth dealt with the condom and grabbed his discarded boxers to clean them up a little. Jason watched him with thinly disguised impatience. As soon as Seth dropped the soiled cloth on the ground again, Jason pulled him down and cuddled against him. “Better than any fantasy,” he murmured sleepily.

Seth held on tight and stared at the ceiling as Jason fell asleep next to him. He only hoped Jason didn’t change his mind about that down the road.

“E
VERYTHING
LOOKS
in order,” Caine said as he picked up a pen to sign the paperwork Sam had drawn up to codify the investment partnership they had proposed the week before. He set the pen to paper and then glanced up at Macklin. “Do you want to read over it first?”

Macklin shook his head, much to Jeremy’s amusement. “You’re the businessman, not me,” Macklin said. “Sign it so I can.”

Caine chuckled and signed at the end of the document. He handed it to Macklin to do the same.

“Walker already signed his copy,” Sam said. “His terms were a little different since the investment wasn’t the same amount.”

Caine looked across the room at Walker. “The amount of money isn’t important. You still have equal say in any decisions we have to make.”

“Sam and Jeremy already made that quite clear,” Walker replied. “I haven’t seen anything on Lang Downs or in any of the decisions Sam and Jeremy have made on Taylor Peak that I would question, so I don’t see it being a problem. We seem to share the same opinions on running a station and dealing with the men.”

“Good. That’s the formalities taken care of. Shall we celebrate?” Caine asked.

“I asked Neil to gather up the year-rounders,” Macklin said. “They should be on their way over. We’ll tell them first and then tell the seasonal jackaroos at dinner. It won’t have nearly as much effect on them as it will on the year-rounders.”

Jeremy preferred it that way anyway. They’d get to tell their friends the way they would share any good news with friends, instead of a more businesslike announcement in the canteen.

“We won’t all fit in here,” Caine said. “Let’s go into the living room.”

Macklin led them into the living room. Jeremy turned to look for Caine, but he had disappeared deeper into the house. Jeremy had been in the office and living room countless times, but he had always considered the rest of the house private. Caine and Macklin didn’t come into his house uninvited. He wouldn’t take an invitation into the living room as permission to go elsewhere in the house.

Moments after they settled, the front door opened and Thorne and Ian came in.

“Hi, Nick,” Ian said immediately. “Neil didn’t say you were here.”

“Hi, Ian, Lachlan. I’ll let Caine and Sam explain,” Walker replied. Jeremy didn’t know how Ian had graduated into the very elite—two as far as he knew—group who called Walker by his first name, but it reminded him again that Walker was already part of this funny little family even before he invested in Taylor Peak.

“Settling in at Taylor Peak?” Thorne asked Walker.

“Yeah,” Walker said. “Getting to know the place and the people who work there.”

“Getting to know Phil, you mean,” Sam teased.

To Jeremy’s surprise, Walker flushed.

“Phil?” Thorne repeated.

“Philippa, the station cook,” Walker said, “but your life’s in your own hands if you call her by her full name.”

“Walker has taken to spending his time off haunting the kitchen,” Jeremy added.

“I’ll be damned,” Thorne said. “All these years and finally snared by a station cook.”

“I’m not snared,” Walker grumbled. “I enjoy her company and her cooking. I can’t very well socialize in the bunkhouse, and the year-rounders aren’t ready to count me as one of them either. Phil doesn’t care if I sit with her as long as I stay out of her way.”

Thorne and Ian exchanged amused glances. “Snared,” Thorne repeated.

“Who’s snared?” Neil asked as he walked in the door with the rest of the year-rounders.

“Nobody,” Walker said as Thorne pointed straight at him.

“Who did the snaring?” Neil asked as if Walker hadn’t spoken.

“I’m not snared,” Walker said again.

“The cook at Taylor Peak,” Sam said. “He’ll tell you it’s just because she doesn’t care if he sits in there, but the rest of us know the truth.”

“That gives us another reason to celebrate,” Caine said. “I don’t have enough champagne flutes for everyone, but I don’t suppose anyone will complain about having it in regular glasses, will they?”

“What are we celebrating?” Seth asked.

Jeremy smiled to see him looking relatively relaxed and standing at Jason’s side like he belonged there. Whatever bump in their road had sent Seth running to Taylor Peak, they seemed to have resolved it.

“Let me pour the champagne and I’ll tell you,” Caine said. Macklin took the glasses and passed them out while Caine poured the sparkling wine for everyone. Once everyone had some, Caine stepped back toward the stone fireplace that dominated one wall of the room. “This is probably Sam and Jeremy’s news to tell instead of mine, but I’m going to tell you anyway. We just signed a partnership with Taylor Peak with the goal of ultimately running the two stations as one large spread, with Sam and Jeremy, Walker, and Macklin and myself as the governing board. In the short term, while we go through the steps to get Taylor Peak certified as organic, very little will change. Eventually, though, we’ll be looking at merging the mobs and staff to increase efficiency. You all will be the backbone of that, and knowing we have all of you to rely on made this decision one of the easiest I’ve ever made. Here’s to Sam and Jeremy and a new era in the neighborhood.”

Everyone cheered and drank, but when they were done, Jeremy clinked his glass to get their attention.

“Caine talks like we’re doing him a favor,” Jeremy said when he had their attention, “but the reality is that he and Macklin and Walker are the ones doing Sam and me a favor. Things aren’t good on Taylor Peak. Devlin was cutting corners left and right, trying to make up for several bad years in a row. With the investment from Walker and Lang Downs, we can put things right and move forward toward making Taylor Peak profitable again for everyone. Caine may say it was the easiest decision he’s ever made, but it’s a show of incredible faith from where I’m sitting. I’m not surprised, since he’s gambled on all of us at one time or another, but it doesn’t make it any less humbling that he’s gambling on us now.” He lifted his glass. “To Caine.”

The cheers this time were deafening. Good, Jeremy thought. Caine deserved it. He’d say he was only doing what anyone would do, but Jeremy had plenty of experience with “anyone,” and Caine didn’t fit any definition of that word.

“You realize you’re probably going to lose a second round of jackaroos when you tell the blokes at Taylor Peak,” Neil said. “Some of them objected to having the station owned by two poofters. Don’t hit me, Molly, that’s what they said.” Jeremy snickered at the way Neil instinctively dodged Molly’s hand the moment the derogative term left his mouth. “But even more common was the objection that Lang Downs was taking over. I’d have stayed longer otherwise, but I was obviously making things worse instead of better.”

“The thought has occurred,” Sam said, “but the choice was losing jackaroos or losing the station. If we lose enough men that we’re dangerously shorthanded, we’ll look into options to share the crew between both stations now instead of later.”

“Who are you more in danger of losing?” Thorne asked. “Crew bosses and year-rounders or seasonal jackaroos?”

“My impression is most of the seasonal jackaroos are new to Taylor Peak,” Jeremy said. “They don’t care about the rivalry with Lang Downs because they haven’t been around to really know it existed. Some of them had issues with Sam and me being together, but they either left or they’ve accepted it enough to finish the season. I don’t see them having a problem with anything that guarantees they get paid. It’s the year-rounders we risk losing now because they’re the ones who absorbed Devlin’s animosity.”

“There are enough of us to send an extra crew boss a day on our days off without impacting Lang Downs at all,” Thorne said as he looked around the gathering.

“Or to send each of you not on your day off without unduly impacting Lang Downs,” Macklin interjected. “Not that many of you take your days off regularly anyway, but that’s a different discussion. If you want to use your day off as a second day at Taylor Peak, that’s up to you.”

Macklin didn’t qualify as “anyone” either. Jeremy didn’t know what he’d done to deserve such amazing friends, but he would always be grateful for them.

“Do you need bodies?” Caine asked. “Do we need to assign some of the seasonal jackaroos to Taylor Peak to balance out your crews? Or is it the leadership you need most?”

“Right now we’re holding it together,” Walker said. “We may lose a few year-rounders, but I think most of them will give us a chance to prove nothing has changed. They may not have the same sense of family that you have here, but they’ve still built lives for themselves on Taylor Peak. They have houses and the like. The seasonal jackaroos almost all have winter accommodations they can return to, but the year-rounders may not have anywhere else to go without some planning first. And if they stay long enough to make those plans, we might convince them nothing has changed. As much as I appreciate everyone’s offers of help, I think it would be less disruptive if we changed as little as possible beyond what we’ve already done until it becomes necessary. We’ll be better off in the long run if the crew bosses at Taylor Peak step up and do the job, and that’s more likely to happen if they don’t feel like we’ve already started replacing them.”

“That makes sense,” Caine said. “My inclination is always to help—and I hope you’ll take us up on our offer of help if you need it. I just forget help isn’t always necessary or appreciated.”

“It’s appreciated,” Jeremy said. “Don’t ever think it’s not. But Walker is right. If we can ease the year-rounders into the merger, it might go over more easily. It might also go over more easily for things like Jason coming to take care of the vet needs and Seth coming to work on the equipment. They aren’t taking jobs from anyone on Taylor Peak since Devlin called in a vet when he needed one and didn’t seem to bother with routine maintenance, only with calling a mechanic in if something broke too badly for him to fix it. It also helps that they’re younger and less established here.
I
know they’re as much a part of Lang Downs as any of us, but the men will look at them and assume they’re new to the station.”

“I’m happy to help,” Seth said, “but I don’t want to stay for several days like I did last time, if I can avoid it. I finally have a place of my own. I want to come home to it every night.”

“We’ll be thankful for any hours you can give us,” Sam said. “We’ll also come by the house before we head back to Taylor Peak and pick up anything that’s left. I hope you’ll be as happy there as we were.”

“Cheers,” Jason said as he put an arm around Seth’s waist. “We’ll certainly try.”

“We’re about to have hungry men waiting for dinner,” Kami
interrupted. “We’ll see you over there.”

Everyone else finished their drinks and headed toward the canteen as well. “You should stay for dinner,” Caine said to Sam and Jeremy. “You can be here for the announcement for the jackaroos, many of whom you worked with, and you can get your things from your house after that. No reason to drive home hungry.”