Maddox: A Short Sweet Steamy Second Chance Doctor Romance (Heart Doctors Book 3) Read online

  MADDOX

  HEART DOCTORS 3

  CARLY KEENE

  THISTLE KNOLL PUBLISHING

  Copyright 2020 Carly Keene. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author. The only exception is that short excerpts may be quoted in a review.

  Cover designed by DesignRans at Fiverr.com.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This one is for Queen Stevie herself.

  Chapter One: Rhiannon

  Maddox, four years ago

  She walked into that bar, and I just knew. I saw her standing just inside the doorway, in this dress that looked like something out of Lord of the Rings, or Stevie Nicks’ concert attire: creamy white, with long drapey sleeves and flowy skirt, all boho chic with her big locket and her cloud of long dark hair held back by ribbons. A tall girl, graceful but solid, with presence. A goddess. While I was staring at her over my glass of Jamesons, she turned her head idly and caught my gaze, and I swear to fuck, looking into her eyes was like falling into a midnight sky. They were dark, endless, with tiny points of light.

  I started hearing Stevie herself singing about Rhiannon ringing like a bell through the night, and right that minute, I was hers. Who will be her lover? Me.

  In those days, I was such a dudebro. I wanted to be the hot-doctor version of Don Draper, charming the panties off every Tinder cutie impressed by my bio and my pecs. I would hit up the bar solo after my day shift at the ER, trying to forget the little boy who nearly died after eating a whole bottle of vitamins thinking they were candy, and the woman with the battered face who walked like her insides were full of broken glass. Those days, I could only take so much of that shit before I wanted to escape into some good booze and a Brazilian-waxed pussy, preferably one with no baggage.

  I could usually pull both at Lucky’s on a Saturday night, when the music got hot and the Instagram babes flooded the place.

  But that night, there was the goddess herself. And she changed everything.

  I picked up my drink and walked over to her, not taking my eyes off her. When I stopped in front of her, she just looked at me with those night-sky eyes, eyebrows raised. I wet my lips, and I spoke. “What tribute may I bring you, Rhiannon, o my goddess?”

  Then she tipped her head in acknowledgment and smiled, and it was everything I had dreamed of, that smile. Knowing, sexual, gracious on those soft pink lips. “Chrysanthemum on the rocks, please.” Her voice was pitched low and a bit husky.

  Walking away to get her drink felt like leaving the warm center of the world. The bartender looked at me funny, and pulled out her phone to look up the recipe. I watched her pour it: absinthe, brandy, dry vermouth, a strip of orange peel. Unusual and powerful, a good choice for a goddess. I was already half hard in my khaki pants when I took the drink back to her, and when she sipped at the glass and licked her top lip, I went full boner.

  God, I wanted her.

  “You look like you came from another world,” I said, and finished my own drink. No more alcohol for me, I was drunk on her.

  She blinked. “Just came from Rennaissance Faire with some friends. They went to do an errand and then they were going to join me, but they’re not here yet.”

  So she was real. She sipped at her drink again, and I decided it was even better that she was real. She was everything: magic but real, ethereal but solid, ageless, knowing and unknowable.

  This kind of reaction, this weird poetry in my head, was not me. If anyone had asked me earlier in the evening what my type was, I’d have said something like, “blonde, young, slender with big tits.” But the goddess had changed my world.

  “Rhiannon,” I said again.

  “Rhiannon? You just decided to call me that?” She tilted her head to look at me. “Are you a big Fleetwood Mac fan? A Stevie fan?”

  “Not particularly. You just . . . you look the way I always pictured Rhiannon.”

  She smiled that secret smile. “And what shall I call you? Are you Mabon?”

  “I’ll answer to anything you call me.” Then I reconsidered. “Who’s Mabon, anyway?”

  She looked me up and down. “Well, your clothes are a little conservative for him—”

  I interrupted her. “I just got off work.”

  “But if you didn’t know you were the Celtic god of prophecy and power, sex and love? I can overlook the fraternity-boy uniform.” The tip of her pink tongue just came out to touch the amber liquid in her glass, and my cock started trying to escape my pants.

  “Sex and love?” I asked, breathless. “I know you’re a goddess. Goddess of what, exactly? Because I would say you were the goddess of everything.”

  “Rhiannon,” she said, and sipped again, “is the goddess of beauty and artistic inspiration. Also transformation, fertility, and magic.” She smiled at me over the rim of her glass. “Plus a few other things.”

  “What’s that like?” I asked, nodding at her drink. “Absinthe and brandy.”

  She held the glass out to me. “Taste it.”

  I took the glass. Turned it around in my hand so I could drink from where her lips had been. It was a potent drink, warm and cool at the same time, both sweet and dry. I almost laughed because it was so perfect for her, but I didn’t because I had the taste of her in my own mouth.

  “Good, mm?” she asked. I just nodded.

  The jukebox stopped playing Fleetwood Mac, and The Weeknd started singing about not feeling his face when he’s with you, and the energy of the place changed. It was shifting from Saturday twilight to Saturday deep night, with all the attendant hormones and alcohol and hookup vibes. And yes, we had those things, but we were outside this world. We were in that magic groove in reality, a place all our own.

  She said something I couldn’t hear. “What?”

  She leaned closer, and I could smell her perfume: flowers and leather, something dark and compelling underneath to contrast with the angel-sleeve dress and the ribbons in her hair. “Do you want to get out of here?”

  Oh, did I.

  Chapter Two: Rings Like a Bell Through the Night

  Rachel, four years ago

  Rhiannon, he called me.

  I’d had a great time with Lia and Simon and Brett at Ren Faire, at what I thought of as my last totally free day before I sacrificed my free time and my career—I wouldn’t say my life, that would be too dramatic—to take care of my nephew like I would my own child. My brother Noah, widowed a few months before, was still reeling from Abby’s death, and he could barely scrape himself out of bed to go to work, much less take care of a two-year-old on top of those long shifts at the hospital ER.

  I loved Noah, and I loved little James, but I wouldn’t deny that I was willingly putting my own life on hold to help out. Noah had gone out of his way to let me set up his giant seven-bedroom house any way I wanted, including turning the room over the garage into my sculpting studio, and that made me feel better. Still, I knew it was going to be tough to get the chance to create.

  So that Saturday, while Noah did his fatherly job and looked after James, I escaped. I put on my costume from my high school Madrigal Dinner and let my hair dangle long and wavy down my back. I listened to troubadours and ate a turkey leg. I drank mulled cider, watched
the jousting, and danced around the Maypole. I knew it would be cheesy, but I spent five bucks to have my palm read, only to be told that I would meet a tall fair stranger soon, and that I would have my heart and other body parts pierced.

  Riiiiight, I thought. I already had two piercings in each ear, and one in my nostril, and I’d long ago decided that I’d done enough. Too Much is never true Art. But the palm reader said the stranger would bring me joy and pain, and that was such a satisfying fortune that I tipped her.

  I’d felt a bit bedraggled, going inside Lucky’s Bar to wait for my friends while they stopped by Simon’s apartment for fresh clothes. Simon wasn’t about to appear in a drinking establishment in a tunic and gartered hose, and I was beginning to wish I’d brought some extra clothes from Noah’s house.

  But there he was, calling me “goddess” like it was a cheesy pick-up line—except that if I judged by the stunned look in his eyes, he meant it. I asked for an esoteric cocktail, and he just went and got it for me. He picked up the Mabon banter in an instant, though I could tell he hadn’t the faintest idea who Mabon was. And then, as if that wasn’t sexy enough, he had to turn my glass around and put his mouth over where mine had been, and I swear my panties soaked through in an instant.

  Never mind that he wasn’t my type. I’ve never been much into the All-American type, that short-hair, no-tats, clean-cut thing, but this guy looked brighter than the frat-boy clothes he was wearing. Also, my best guess said he might have some decent muscles under them. And his eyes were pretty, a soft blue-green with a darker ring around the iris.

  Not to mention that he was calling me by the name of the goddess Rhiannon, she of muse and magick.

  I thought of the fortune-teller and the “tall fair stranger,” and about Mabon the Young, who could make anyone fall in love with him. I thought about my day out of the cage, and about extending it well into the night.

  So I asked if he’d like to go somewhere with me, and his eyes went dark like a stormy sea, and my arousal became intense.

  “My place?” he said, and his voice had gone as dark as his eyes.

  On the short walk, I texted Lia, and then I shut my phone off and tucked it into the purse on my belt. Mabon stopped walking near one of those old brick warehouses rehabbed into trendy apartments. “Here,” he said.

  We went upstairs. He closed the door behind us, and then we were on each other, only streetlights shining in through the window to aid us in discovering each other’s bodies. I kissed him. He tasted like whiskey and brandy, vermouth and sugar and absinthe, everything intoxicating. He tasted like recklessness and freedom. I couldn’t get enough. I could feel him hard against my thigh, and I practically ripped his shirt in my enthusiasm.

  I’d been right, he had a lovely body under the boring clothes, all lean and lithely muscled like a panther. He kicked off his pants and hefted me into his arms, carrying me to the bedroom. He laid me down on the bed, flung up my skirts, and ran his hands up my thighs in a caress. “I can’t wait to taste,” he said, and then my damp panties were just gone, and his head was between my thighs, his tongue on my grateful pussy.

  I took one moment to congratulate myself on having had a full wax the week before, and then I had no time to think of anything but his skill and my pleasure. He licked me right into one of the best orgasms of my life, and while I was catching my breath, seeing stars, he planted one tender kiss on the slope of my belly. “I’ve never eaten goddess before,” he said. “Nothing like it.”

  When I could breathe, I stood up to take off my dress and bra. “Ever made love to a goddess?”

  “Not yet,” he said, and took off his boxers. I caught my breath. He was beautifully made, from his strong chest and biceps to his manly thighs, and his cock stood up long and thick and beautiful. I knelt on the bed to take him into my mouth, moaning in pleasure at the feel of him: hard as marble under the soft suede of his skin, and so solid. I was aching in my core, thinking of the way he’d feel inside me.

  Before long he was gently pushing me back, telling me to stop before the game was over. “You’re incredible,” he said, and kissed me, our tongues dancing together in warm liquid sensation. His fingers were gentle and insistent on my nipples, teasing them to diamond hardness, and I could feel my arousal dripping down to my thighs.

  I groaned into his mouth. “Please,” I said, and reached for his cock. I lined up the head of it with my wet opening and we both moaned.

  He pulled back a little, just enough to look into my eyes with his own bright blue ones, then pushed that amazing dick inside me, slowly. “Receive my act of worship, my goddess,” he said, and although it was cheesy—it wasn’t. He meant it.

  With every stroke, he was kissing my pussy with his cock. I kissed back. It went slow and languorous, every movement sweet torture, and then suddenly it wasn’t slow, it was urgent and ravenous, and I called his name out again and again as I reached a peak of sensation. My pleasure arrowed out from my core, making me limp, before he went rigid atop me, crying out as he filled me with hot juices.

  Then he kissed me again. “That was perfect,” he said softly, and it was.

  It was perfect again two more times that night: one time raunchy and full of need, the next gentle and dreamlike, a bubble of magic containing us and only us. Then I fell asleep, only to be woken in the wee hours by my phone ringing nonstop. I fished it out of my belt purse and recognized my brother’s number. “Hey,” I whispered. “Everything okay?”

  “It’s a little after five,” Noah said. “I have to leave. Can you be back in half an hour?”

  I was taken aback. “Um. Yeah. No, not really. I have to catch a cab or an Uber or something.”

  He exhaled. “Just as soon as you can, okay?”

  Mabon the Young Beloved didn’t stir in the mound of bedcovers.

  “Yeah,” I said on a deep sigh, reminding myself that I had voluntarily signed up for this, to stay with Noah while he grieved and to take care of baby James. “Yeah. As soon as I can.”

  “Rach? Thank you. Really, it means so much,” Noah said, and his voice cracked a little. “To know you’ve got my back.”

  “What’s family for?” I said. “Go when you need to. James won’t wake up, he never does.”

  “Thanks.”

  I fished around and found my bra, then my very wrinkled dress, rushing every minute. Texted Uber. Got dressed. And all the time, Mabon never woke. Only light snores broke the silence. I thought about leaving my number, and then I thought about how perfect it had been, the whole thing start to finish. Mabon the Young, god of sex and love and prophecy.

  I wanted to keep it perfect.

  I wanted not to find out that Mabon was a douche, that he already had a girlfriend, that he had some kind of investment-banker type of job that looked down on artists. I wanted not to find out that his parents paid for this cushy apartment. I wanted not to know that he was the kind of person who “didn’t get” modern art. I wanted not to know that he spent his weekends at bars trawling for Instagram girls, making them scream his name with the same kind of pleasure I’d screamed it.

  I wanted that perfection in my memory, unspoiled by reality. Fairy tales and myths? Maybe. But I spent my hours with Noah and James pursuing adequacy and my hours in the studio pursuing transcendent loveliness, and I never felt that I got to either standard, in either case. This might be my only shot at perfection, ever.

  So I kissed his cheek, marveling again over the lovely lines of his body in the dawn light. I put on my ankle boots and went downstairs to my Uber, and then to my brother’s house, where he was pacing in front of his car and his two-year-old son was awake and screaming in his crib.

  I left “perfect” behind, and I went forward into four years of living for somebody other than myself.

  I didn’t regret living for Noah and James. I still don’t. But I dreamed about my Mabon.

  Chapter Three: Taken By the Wind

  Maddox, now

  Noah Bonner corners me in the cafete
ria while I’m gulping down an orange juice and a sad leftover Panera sandwich from two days ago, which has somehow managed to become both stale and soggy. “What’s this?” I look from the fancy envelope he’s offering me to his face. We’ve been working in the Hopedale ER together for six years and we’re friends, but we don’t really socialize outside of work.

  “Kalinda and I are having a post-wedding reception.” He gestures at the envelope. “Getting a few people together for appetizers and wedding cake, Saturday a couple of weeks from now. You’re invited.”

  “Dude,” I say, “you got married months ago.”

  “Dude,” Noah shoots back, “you have to quit calling everybody ‘dude.’ You’re not in your twenties anymore.”

  “I’m young at heart.”

  “You’re single at heart.”

  “Ha, very funny. I work a million hours a week, in case you hadn’t noticed,” I observe out loud. “Come to think of it, that’s probably why you married someone else who’s stuck with our shitty work schedule.”

  He shrugs. “I won’t say it isn’t nice to work the same time my wife is working. We have lunch together, now that we’re back on day shift.”

  “Can’t hurt that you have the opportunity for a quickie in a broom closet at work, either,” I tease.

  His face goes brick-red, and he splutters, “We don’t—that’s illegal, Maddox! And grossly unsanitary. Besides, we have a perfectly good bed at home.”

  “So how are things at home?”

  “Good,” he says, and his face opens into a real smile. “Amazing. I love it. The kids had kind of a rough time adjusting, but everything seems to have calmed down now. We even hired an overnight nanny to help out with the little guys, and it was a huge relief. No more screaming meemies every morning before school, making sure everybody has their shoes on and their packed lunches and their gym suits and whatever. It was making Rachel crazy.”