Maia's Magickal Mates [The Double R 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (36 page)

She sighed. “Oh yes…just the way I like it…”

He knew she liked it this way. She also liked it slow and gentle. Thayne liked it any way Maia did, and he was willing to do anything to please her. He knew Cade was, too

Thayne returned her firm hug, his chest making contact with Cade’s knuckles as his brother cupped Maia’s breasts for leverage.

Once Cade pushed inside her from the back, seating himself to the hilt, and they were all physically joined, Thayne did his thing and psychically connected them.

It got easier and easier each time they had sex, so much so that it was almost second nature. He didn’t ask for permission any longer, already knowing he had it as Maia and Cade welcomed him inside.

Thayne closed his eyes against the double vision that invariably came with seeing things in the corporeal world and seeing things in the psychic world. His mental eyes were immediately greeted with the pulsing red and blue cords representing his, Maia’s, and Cade’s thoughts twining around each other. If Maia hadn’t just told him how she felt, he would have known she loved him from her thoughts alone.

Thayne sensed Cade’s thoughts, chaotic, inhibited, and measured, as if he allowed their joining out of duress and really didn’t want to play a part.

When Maia began grinding her hips back and forth between them, she pulled Cade into their circle despite his hesitance.

Cade slid his hands down Maia’s body until he reached her hips and latched on to guide her movements to his satisfaction, the rough roll of his hips.

Thayne followed suit, gyrating and grinding his hips to match Maia and Cade’s rhythm as he wove through their mental threads. He maintained the connection and drew pleasure and sustenance from their auras. He could see and feel Maia’s and Cade’s love for him as well as their love for each other. He didn’t need Cade to verbalize his feelings to confirm this.

Thayne reached out and touched Cade’s cord, stroking it and letting his brother know that he and Maia were with him and they weren’t going anywhere.

Cade released a hoarse cry as he drove into Maia’s pussy and desperately circled his hips like his life depended on getting off. He buried his face against Maia’s back as if he could run away and hide from his feelings or Thayne’s psychic reassurance.

Thayne held tight to Cade’s cord and almost went into orbit when his brother climaxed with a mighty shout and Maia simultaneously squeezed her pussy muscles around his cock in the throes of her own orgasm. “Oh, Goddess!” Thayne squeezed Maia to him, spilling the last of his seed inside her as he tumbled headlong into his own completion.

Panting, he collapsed onto his back, bringing Maia with him as Cade disengaged.

Maia lay against Thayne, cooing to him as if he were a young child who’d taken a painful fall off his bike, and like a little boy he turned into her, seeking succor.

He nuzzled his face against her breasts, filling the empty space that Cade had left when he’d disconnected from them—physically and mentally.

Since he’d been in the Old West, Thayne had let his hair grow much longer than he usually wore it. Both Cade and Maia liked the look on him. He had to admit he kind of liked the wildness of it, too. He especially liked it now, smiling as Maia pushed the damp tendrils away from his face and cupped his cheeks with both hands.

Thayne opened his eyes to find her peering at him.

“I appreciate what you tried to do,” she whispered.

“What did I try to do?”

“Let him know we’re here for him, that we love him.”

“I don’t think it helped.”

Maia glanced over her shoulder to see Cade on the other side of the room, already pulling his jeans up over his hips and buttoning them closed.

He frowned when he caught her and Thayne looking at him. “How long are you guys going to lie around letting time pass you by? We’ve got things to do.”

“See,” Thayne said.

“He’s just in denial. Deep down he knows the truth,” Maia said.

“Stop talking about me like I’m not here,” Cade grumbled.

Thayne slapped Maia on the butt and flipped her onto her back.

“Hey!”

He kissed her hard, reluctant to leave her but knowing that Cade was right and they all had things to do. He leaped out of bed to get into his own jeans, glancing back at Maia with a tender smile. “Playtime’s over, honey.”
In more ways than one
.

Cade sat on his side of Thayne’s buggy ensconced in his own little world as they bumped and rolled their way to the Coles’ farm on the outskirts of town. No matter how much he tried to separate himself from his brother and his aura, however, he couldn’t get away from what had happened back at the boarding house.

He hadn’t been prepared for that scene between him and Thayne, much less the one that had followed between them and Maia. He hadn’t been prepared for the battering his emotions took in that session of lovemaking and sex magick. Usually he got through it able to restrain his feelings, at the very least keep them to himself. Even when Thayne was in his mind and they were all connected and it was hard to keep anything to himself, he managed to maintain his emotional distance.

That hadn’t been the case this time, which told him a few things, the most important one being that he probably needed to move out of the boarding house and on his own.

The idea sent a knot of panic shooting to his chest.

Despite all his behavior to the contrary, he didn’t want to go away from Maia and Thayne. He couldn’t imagine not waking up next to them every morning, seeing Maia’s vibrant smile and the devilish twinkle in her eyes when she tried to start something between them all in the name of “practice.” He couldn’t imagine not sharing her with Thayne and seeing Thayne’s rapturous look over Maia’s shoulder when he came inside her at the same time as Cade. He couldn’t imagine not spending quiet evenings unwinding with them after a long day of Thayne’s medical runs and visits and Cade’s helping Maia and Sabrina hunt up herbs for their fledgling notions and potions business.

He couldn’t imagine being without his family.

Why had he pushed them away?

The question begged for an answer that he just did not have, because when he got right down to it, he needed Maia and Thayne and the routine that they had all fallen into here in Elk Creek. He needed it all like a plant needed sun and water. He didn’t think he could survive, at least not thrive, without the support system that Thayne and Maia provided. Cade could pretend that connection and support weren’t important to him, especially when Thayne used his psychic gifts and took them all out of themselves, but the truth was Cade needed Maia and Thayne as much as he loved them.

“I should have told her,” Cade murmured and felt Thayne’s gaze briefly touch him as he shifted it from the road.

“You should have.”

“I do love her.”

“Why are you telling me and not her? She can’t read your mind.”

“No, but you can.”

Thayne clicked his teeth at the horses pulling the buggy and drew them to a stop.

Cade loved how his brother was able to transition from riding horses for pleasure and using the buggy he’d inherited from Dr. Hopwood for business. He seemed to switch from each with such ease and use both with equal skill. It had worked the same way with settling into life in Elk Creek. From the beginning Thayne seemed to have taken to the place and people like a duck to a pond, while Cade felt like no matter how long they stayed he floundered. Even Maia, who still worried about being the only black person who actually lived in the town, seemed to have fallen under the romanticism of living in the Old West, working at taming her men and the land as she did something she’d always wanted to do in building a business of her own with Sabrina.

How could he tell Thayne all of this? How could he show any vulnerability when he and Maia needed him now more than ever to help fend off the madman’s threat? How could he abandon them now, or ever?

“You know I would never tell Maia something you didn’t want her to know. Whatever way you feel about her, she’ll have to learn it from you. I’m not letting you off the hook that easily, Cade.”

Leave it to Thayne to be tough and put things into perspective.

Cade needed that, though. He needed Thayne’s tough love. When they’d been kids, his brother had always been able to keep him grounded and centered with his inescapable, mandatory logic. Things had not changed since they’d become adults.

“You’re right. I know you are.”

“So what gives?”

“You know I’ve never been good with showing affection, not when it counts. I’m not like you, bro.” Not to mention he was confused. He didn’t want to tell Maia he loved her when his feelings were so tied up with his parents’ warning and the madman’s threat. It was all too possible that what he felt for Maia was a strong sense of duty and protectiveness reinforced by a healthy dose of lust. Maybe he didn’t love her at all.

Cade envied Thayne his certainty, his ability to know what he wanted—whether it was the medical profession or Maia—and pursue it with unqualified passion. He’d never been able to do it. All his life he’d drifted from one place to another, from one woman to another, never settling on one job, one home, or one mate for an extended run—until now, and he’d had to go back in time more than a hundred years to discover that longevity.

“I’m not going to tell you how to handle your business, but you should have told her.”

“I can’t.”

“So you said, but it’s not too late.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I understand you’re running away like you’ve always done.”

“What the hell would you know about it?”

Thayne didn’t even react to Cade’s flash of temper, just said, “I know a lot more about it than you think.”

Cade sighed, tilted his head back, and closed his eyes. He let the late-afternoon sun wash over his face, wondering how Thayne could ever understand what it was like to live in constant fear when he lived so fearlessly. Unlike Cade, his brother wasn’t afraid to let his guard down and expose his heart. Even after Tiffany stomped it to a pulp, he hadn’t hesitated to step outside his comfort zone and into a ménage. He hadn’t been afraid to walk into the unknown and risk his heart and humiliation again.

And he calls me the wild one.

Cade grinned at the thought just as Thayne put a hand on his shoulder.

“What do you have to gain playing games, especially now?”

“I’m not playing games. I can’t tell her because—”

“Because?”

“I haven’t
earned
her love, all right!”

Thayne stared at him with a mixture of sympathy and shock. “What?”

“Don’t you see? I…I don’t deserve her. I don’t deserve any of this, what we have in Elk Creek, none of it.” Cade waved his hands to encompass where they sat.

“That’s ridiculous! Are you saying you don’t deserve to be happy?”

“Not yet.”

“You can’t save the world, Cade, at least not on your own. Trust me. I’ve tried.”

“I know, and it hasn’t stopped you from continuing to try.”

“I’m sure when Mom and Dad visited you in that dream they never meant for you to be so hard on or deny yourself.”

“I’m not being any harder on myself than you are on yourself.”

“And you see how good that’s worked out for me so far.”

Cade frowned, wondering at his brother’s words. “Yeah, I do see.” Didn’t Thayne know that he was everything Cade wanted to be?

Thayne shook his head. “I appreciate the idolization, Cade, but up until now I haven’t really done anything to deserve it. If it hadn’t been for you, your conviction about this ‘mission,’ I never would have given our ménage a chance.”

“Leaping headlong into a physical relationship doesn’t require any real conviction, not with someone as hot as Maia.” Cade smiled.

“Joke all you want, but I still say you don’t give yourself enough credit. You’ve come a long way since LA.”

“Is that why you didn’t want to bring me along on this run?”

Thayne shrugged, looking uncharacteristically doubtful. “I was trying to protect you.”

“From my gifts.”

“It’s one thing assuming what happened to Tommy Cole and those other kids, but to have you go in that house and maybe see things to confirm what happened…” Thayne shook his head. “Can you blame me for wanting to spare you that?”

“There’s more at stake here than just my well-being and sanity, and if I can give some families a small measure of comfort or closure, I have to do that.”

Thayne didn’t respond, but Cade saw his jaw muscles flexing and his Adam’s apple convulsively bobbing as he swallowed.

“You have to let me help,” Cade whispered. When his brother still didn’t respond Cade frowned and asked, “What’s really bothering you?”

Thayne stared off into the distance where the Coles’ farm was located. “We’re supposed to protect each other, and I just have a feeling that letting you set foot in that house isn’t the best way to do that.”

“Stop being so ominous and overprotective. I’m a big boy and I’ll be fine. I have to be.”
I have to stick around to make sure nothing happens to you or Maia.
Cade didn’t say it, but he could tell that his brother heard him, and Thayne’s next words confirmed this.