Maia's Magickal Mates [The Double R 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Read online

  “I’m not sure yet, but I’m willing to explore it if you are.”

  “We’ll see.”

  He peered at her suddenly serious expression, tempted to read her mind, but he had a rule against pilfering thoughts. He rarely broke it. Sometimes, especially during busy and emotionally intense situations in the emergency room, thoughts seeped in when his defenses were down or he wasn’t concentrating. As a habit, though, he didn’t read people without their consent. Anything otherwise was tantamount to casting a binding spell or using erotic magick that took away another’s free will.

  Thayne chose not to use his powers that way. He lived by the An’ it harm none, do what ye will tenet that his mother and father had lived by.

  “And who is this lovely woman who’s come to rescue you?” Caroline approached, perennial smile firmly in place.

  “This is Maia Jensen.” He automatically pulled her to his side in a protective, possessive gesture that surprised him as much as her. “Maia, this is Caroline Henson, without whose backup I would totally flounder in the emergency room.”

  Caroline laughed. “Oh, he’s totally telling the truth.” She proffered a hand.

  Maia easily returned her smile and shook her hand. “So you keep him in line, then?”

  “We try. But now that you’re here to take over, I gladly relinquish the duty.”

  Thayne cleared his throat. “Ladies, I’m here. Stop talking about me,” he teased, getting into the spirit of the women’s banter, mostly because he could sense Caroline’s genuine pleasure at his upcoming date and didn’t sense any jealousy toward Maia at all.

  Impulsively, he lowered his shields, just slightly, and caught Caroline’s Bravo, Maia, for coming to get your man before this place and these people gobble him up whole.

  He glanced down at Maia and caught her frown.

  Did she know what he had just done? He knew she was psychic but didn’t know exactly which or how many gifts she possessed. If she was a telepath, he would have sensed it by now, so he was pretty sure she didn’t know that he had broken his own golden rule, even if his intent wasn’t malicious.

  Thayne squeezed Maia’s shoulder. “We ready to hit the road?”

  “I’m ready when you are.”

  “I need your John Hancock before you leave, Doc.” Caroline pushed a clipboard at him. “Last one for the night.”

  Thayne took the clipboard and glanced through the notes that he had taken earlier and any that he’d added since before he finally put his signature at the bottom and handed the record back to Caroline.

  “Good doing business with you.” She saluted.

  “Always a pleasure.”

  “Have a good time, and don’t think about us peons sweating away in this insane asylum while you enjoy a nice romantic dinner.”

  Thayne chuckled. “I’ll try not to.”

  * * * *

  Maia remained silent as they walked to the garage to retrieve Tamara’s car, Thayne leading the way as she directed him to where she’d parked.

  Once they got there, Maia jumped in with both feet and suggested they go to the restaurant in her sister’s car instead of taking two vehicles. She hinted that they’d save gas, but she actually wanted to see how willing Thayne was to put himself, or at least his mobility, at her mercy.

  He hesitated for a second, which she’d expected, but finally agreed, which she hadn’t expected.

  “Really?” she asked.

  “It makes sense. We can always come back and get my SUV once we’re done.”

  She waited a moment for him to add a rider, something like “…depending on how the evening goes and whether or not you want to spend the night at my place,” but he didn’t say anything more.

  Admittedly, she’d been horny since late afternoon and leaving Cade at the Old Western town with Jesse.

  Not even a session with her trusty jackrabbit vibrator had done a bit of good to take off the edge. Hence, she had shown up at the hospital as wound up and tense as if she hadn’t indulged, thanks to Thayne’s younger brother.

  The man was a rabble-rouser, no doubt about it, one who reveled in his abilities to keep people on their toes.

  She certainly had been on guard since leaving him, and she didn’t want to be, not with Thayne. She wanted to let her guard down. He was, after all, not his brother, and she was certain that he wanted more from her than just sex.

  That thought alone should have made her anxious around Thayne and gravitate to what Cade offered, especially following her past dating practices, but Maia had decided she didn’t want temporary anymore. It was time for her to grow up and settle down.

  Thayne remained the perfect man with whom to do this. Not only was he older, but he was her perfect foil in every way, someone Desiree or their mother would have steered her toward if Maia hadn’t already set her eyes on him herself.

  Aside from fitting all the criteria for perfect son-in-law material—settled, stable, good breadwinner—Thayne was damn sexy.

  Call her shallow, but Maia appreciated his looks and not just in an aesthetic, he’s-a-beautiful-work-of-art-I’d-like-to-hang-on-my-living-room-wall way. She regarded him in a very physical, he-makes-me-hot-and-bothered-I’d-like-to-fling-him-on-a-carpeted-floor-and-do-the-nasty-with-him way.

  Now what kind of way was that to think about treating a respectable doctor?

  Maia watched him now from the corner of her eye as he got comfortable in the passenger seat and buckled himself into Tamara’s sedan.

  She licked her lips, wondering what he’d do if she straddled him right there in the parking garage, grabbed him by the tie, and stole a kiss. Would he go with the flow or put a stop to the entire evening, thinking her a slut that didn’t deserve the time of day from him?

  “You know where the restaurant is, right?” he asked and broke her out of her daze.

  “I programmed it in the GPS once you gave me the location earlier.”

  He smiled as if he was a proud papa.

  Maia had thought that might appeal to his superior sense of organization, but she really hadn’t wanted to chance messing up their evening. Getting lost on the way to the restaurant, despite its short distance from the hospital, went right up there with spilling wine in his lap or down her front and ruining her brand-new outfit.

  She’d taken special care getting ready for the night, after all, more care than she had for any of their other dates, and dressed in chocolate linen drawstring pants and sandals instead of her usual jeans and boots. A tomboy not really into skirts or dresses, her biggest indulgence to femininity and seduction, however, remained the top she sported. She’d bought it with the sole purpose of turning the tides tonight. The attention-grabbing leopard-and-floral-printed chiffon top featured a smocked, off-the-shoulder neckline and voluminous belled sleeves cinched at the elbow. It was ladylike, sexy, and whimsical.

  What good did it do her to call herself a Wiccan in the end if she didn’t take charge of her own destiny and live up to the philosophies that drew her to neopaganism in the first place?

  Maia started the car and pulled out of the garage.

  They rode the entire twenty minutes to Avon’s Trattoria Zafferano in silence, which suited Maia just fine as she got her thoughts and strategy in order. Usually, she hated quiet like what existed in the car between her and Thayne, but she wasn’t uncomfortable and appreciated that Thayne seemed at ease with her and the silence, too.

  Wasn’t that a good sign? That the silence between them wasn’t awkward and they were relaxed enough in each other’s company to not feel forced to fill the hush?

  Maia steered her sister’s car to the curb and, luckily, found a space just a few yards from the restaurant entrance.

  She could see from where they sat that the place had a good-sized crowd but that there were a few empty tables. They should be in even more luck if they got a move on.

  The restaurant choice had been a concession to Maia’s no-food-with-a-face principles more than Thayne’s not-as-strict veg
etarian sensibilities, since he still ate chicken and fish.

  It was difficult to find places to eat in Colorado that didn’t serve meat in one fashion or another. Dating someone as enlightened as Thayne, who didn’t mind bypassing all of the more popular steak houses in favor of an establishment with a mostly pizza and pasta menu, made the search for a restaurant a lot less stressful than if he had been a gung-ho carnivore like most everyone else in cattle country, especially the men.

  Maia may not have agreed with them, but she understood these consumers and residents’ sentiments. Agriculture—wheat, cattle, and sheep—remained one of the major industries in Colorado, and a lot of people’s livelihoods depended on how many people consumed its products.

  Not eating meat remained a personal choice for Maia, just as moving to and living in cattle country did. At least with the current health craze there were a lot of healthier vegetarian and vegan choices around than, say, ten or twenty years ago.

  This part of their relationship had always been easy. She and Thayne had almost always been in agreement about where and what to eat, which could be a big deal breaker in some relationships. Dating a meat eater when one was a vegetarian or vegan was tantamount to a smoker dating a nonsmoker. There were just some humps that could not be overcome, and these two health concerns were it for Maia.

  When Maia turned off the ignition, Thayne told her to wait. She watched as he quickly unbuckled himself, got out of the car, and ran around the front bumper to meet her at the driver’s-side door.

  Maia smiled, still charmed by his manners.

  She often thought Thayne anachronistic, that he had been born a century or two too late, and again envisioned him in the Old West. She thought that he would fit right in that time period without too much of a problem.

  Now her, on the other hand, she didn’t think she’d last a New York minute in the Old West with her liberal views and her mouthy ways. They might try to burn her at the stake. Wait, no. That had been Salem, not the Old West.

  Either way, it wasn’t anything she had to concern herself with.

  Maia unlocked the door and allowed Thayne to pull it open for her.

  He hooked his arm, and Maia linked her arm with his, resting her hand on his bicep. She shuddered at the feel of his muscles flexing beneath her fingers and felt like a silly teenager for getting so worked up over something so simple and relatively nonsexual. Except that her thoughts had jumped to things decidedly carnal and not so simple, like finally seeing Thayne naked when she slept with him at the end of the evening.

  Out of the gutter, out of the gutter. Get your mind out of the gutter!

  She needed to get over herself. She had been comparably chaste with Thayne, at least more chaste than a lot of women she knew would have been. Some of her college classmates would have sopped him up with a biscuit and gravy by now. With someone as sexy as Thayne, they certainly would have slept with him on the first date.

  She wasn’t a virgin or a complete angel, but she had her standards. She knew that Thayne did, too, and if she had behaved the same way some of her college classmates used to, the way her sister thought she behaved, the first date would have probably been the last date. Thayne just didn’t strike her as a sleeping-together-on-the-first-date type of guy. She’d instinctively known that and followed his lead that night, keeping her distance and not wanting to ruin a good thing before it even had a chance to start. She had exercised such restraint much to the detriment of her lively libido.

  Maia intended to make up for that restraint tonight if it was the last thing she did.

  * * * *

  They didn’t make it past the appetizer.

  Soon after they had been seated, Maia had thrown caution to the wind and started playing footsie under the table with Thayne. It started off innocently enough, with her sliding one foot out of her sling-back flat sandals to run her bare toes up Thayne’s calf and shin.

  He looked at her with a heated expression, Caribbean-blue eyes showing no sign of shock or disapproval. It was as if he had expected as much and welcomed her forwardness.

  Maia licked her lips, deciding to take more liberties when the waitress came over with a basket of warm garlic rolls and a bottle of the house wine, ready to take their orders.

  Thayne cleared his throat and, without taking his gaze off of Maia, stated, “We’d like a little more time to decide.”

  “Oh, of course, sir. Take as much time as you need.” The waitress left.

  “You realize we’ll be waiting another hour before we can order our food now.”

  Thayne uncorked the bottle of wine and poured a splash into each of their glasses in turn. “Would that be such a bad thing?”

  “No, not really.” Maia picked up a roll and bypassed the butter on the table to take a bite of the succulent, melt-in-your-mouth garlic bread as Thayne took a sip of his wine. The olive oil coating the roll more than served its purpose. “What I want isn’t on the menu anyway.” She watched him and gave the man credit for not choking on his wine, especially when she licked her fingers before placing the remaining piece of bread on her saucer.

  Maia upped the ante on her under-the-table game and slid her foot between Thayne’s thighs to rest at his crotch. She further tested the waters and teased his package with her toes before pressing the pad of her foot flush against his cock and rubbing. She smiled at his slight intake of breath but for the most part loved his self-control and loved it even more when he took her foot in his hands and massaged the sole with his thumbs.

  Oh Goddess, that felt just a little too good for him to only have his hands on her foot. He might as well have been caressing her pussy for how hot she was right then.

  Only Cade’s presence could have made things any hotter.

  Where did that thought just come from?

  Maia didn’t care and didn’t want to examine it any further. She just went with it, closing her eyes and imagining Cade sitting at the table adjacent to her and sliding his tongue from her throat to her ear before taking her lobe between his teeth.

  “We’ll take the check now.”

  Maia opened her eyes to see the waitress standing at their table, surprised that Thayne had called her over before she realized what he had said and understood that he was ready to go.

  “Is there something wrong with your bread or wine?” the waitress asked.

  “No, not at all. We’ve just changed our minds about eating…out.”

  Maia didn’t even bother to move her foot out of Thayne’s lap, not that he would have let her anyway. He held onto her foot so firmly beneath the table that when the waitress caught what they were doing and gave them a knowing grin, Maia just relaxed her foot muscles and smiled.

  “I’ll bring your check right over, sir.”

  “Thank you.”

  “That was a little presumptuous,” Maia scolded, reminded of his brother’s arrogance at the Old Western town when she’d protested too much at his assessment of what she thought of his looks. Secretly, she’d enjoyed Cade’s audacity, just as she now enjoyed Thayne’s.

  “A little.” He grinned at her teasing.

  She liked this new side of him, wondering if it was actually new or if her bold behavior unleashed what lay just beneath the surface of Thayne’s composure.

  Whatever had come over him, Maia decided she enjoyed it and thought his behavior virtually guaranteed that she would be getting a piece of him tonight.

  Her pussy gushed at the thought of her dry spell finally coming to an end.

  It had been far too long for her. She’d had a couple of hookups since she moved out to The Double R two years ago with her mother and sister but nothing nearly close to what she experienced back in New York. She thought at first her sexual inactivity persisted because the pickings were so slim out in the boonies. She realized, however, this wasn’t the case at all and that she had gotten picky in her old age.

  That pickiness had led to a year-and-a-half period of celibacy. Make that one year, six months, two
weeks, and three days.

  Damn, if she remembered it to the day, then it had been way too long!

  Now that they were on the road and on their way to Thayne’s, Maia’s nerves began to set in. She felt like she had when she’d first arrived at the hospital and laid eyes on Thayne in his natural environment surrounded by his staff.

  She’d had a close call with the Caroline Henson woman until she sensed her honest goodwill and knew that she didn’t have anything to worry about concerning Nurse Henson and Thayne. The nurse was not her enemy, especially not now. Right now Maia remained her own worst enemy, fretting over the upcoming events that she had wrought.

  Be careful what you ask for because you just might get it.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t want Thayne. She so still wanted him.

  Despite Thayne assuring her that Cade was probably hanging out in town, Maia yet worried about bumping into him at Thayne’s.

  How would Cade react to seeing her with his brother? She hadn’t wanted to tell him earlier who she dated, didn’t want to drive a wedge between him and his brother or hurt his feelings. However, she hadn’t considered her own feelings and that her attraction to Cade would make an encounter between the three of them an awkward situation.

  She’d be a fool to deny an attraction between her and Cade, especially when the magnetism was as strong as her attraction to Thayne—different, maybe, but just as strong.

  Maia was one who appreciated the differences, too.

  Cade was pure, smoldering sex where Thayne was simmering heat and slow sensuality.

  She wanted them both. Not everyone was down with the ménage a trois scenario like her sisters and their men, however. Tamara, Jesse, and Jax and Desiree, Carson, and Sam were the exception to the traditional rules of courtship and settling down.

  Cade, he might go for this scenario. She sensed the rebel in him like it lived in her. Thayne, however? She couldn’t see him going for the nonconventional setup that had been dancing through Maia’s head since she’d earlier met Cade at The Double R.