Maia's Magickal Mates [The Double R 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (10 page)

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.

The fact that both men turned her on in different ways unnerved her. Like any flawed human, she wanted to have her cake and eat it, too. She didn’t want to be forced to make a choice between the two men.

“Make a right at the next corner.”

Maia followed Thayne’s directions and saw the large, modern, two-story ranch house with its smaller, connecting guest house about fifty yards down the road.

When she neared the house, she smoothly steered Tamara’s car into the empty driveway with a sense of relief.

Maybe Cade wasn’t home and did remain out.

Thayne unbuckled his seat belt and turned to her as she turned off the ignition. “You’ve been quiet since we left the restaurant. Having second thoughts?”

Maia unbuckled her seat belt and turned to him. She searched his poker face for a long moment before answering. “I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time,” she finally admitted. “Why would I be having second thoughts?”

Thayne turned away from her to look through the windshield at the house, and Maia took an instant to admire the sculpted lines of his profile as a muscle in his jaw pulsed. She missed his dimples something terrible right about then.

“Are
you
having second thoughts?”

He turned back to her, face still unreadable. “Maia, there’s something important I need to tell you before we go any further with this relationship.”

Oh Goddess, he’s either going to tell me he’s gay, he has an incurable disease, or he has a wife and kids somewhere that he neglected to tell me about.
“Okay, Thayne. Shoot.”

Funny that she would use that particular verb, especially since that’s what Thayne wanted to do…to himself…in the head.

Now that she had given him the floor, staring at him and waiting patiently for him to air his dirty laundry, Thayne couldn’t pull the trigger to tell her what he was and what he could do.

The more seconds ticked by, the more uneasy he became until it was all he could do not to just run from the car, escape into the safety of his home, and never call or see Maia again.

That last thought alone made his heart ache and finally unhinged his jaw.

He cleared his throat as he returned Maia’s intent look. “You know I’m a Wiccan.”

“I think we got our mutual spirituality out of the way before our first date when I asked you about your crystal.”

Thayne smiled at her aide-m
é
moire, recalling her forward, flirtatious manner in the treatment room when he’d tended to her raccoon bite. “It’s actually a scrying pendant.”

“Made of quartz crystal.”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever used it to see into the future?”

No, but I could tell you what you’re thinking right now if I wanted to.
“No, never.”

“That’s too bad. Maybe it would help you decide how to handle this thing that’s living and breathing between us.”

“I don’t need a crystal to tell me how to do that.”

“Are you sure? Because it seems to me like you’re having some issues with moving forward.” Maia reached for his tie, and he silently watched as she unknotted it before sliding it from the collar of his shirt and discarding it over her shoulder. Next, she moved to the buttons on his shirt, undoing several before she evidently reached her prize. She took his pendant in her hand, bouncing it up and down in her palm a few times before looking up at him.