Hot Silver Nights: Silver Fox Romance Collection

by Ainsley Booth

  The waitress swings by quickly with coffee then returns to tell us the specials. She gives us a few minutes, then returns once we’ve stacked our menus at the edge of the table.

  “You guys know what you want?” she asks with a warm smile.

  I order eggs Benedict and Adrienne gets the frittata of the day.

  “Are you visiting for the weekend?” the waitress asks as she scribbles our order on her notepad.

  “Something like that,” Adrienne says.

  I grin at her.

  The waitress twirls her pen at me. “You’re…oh, God, this is embarrassing. Like, I recognize you, but I’ve forgotten your name. But you work for the prime minister, right?”

  Surprised, I lean back in my chair. “That’s right.”

  She blushes. “I follow you on Twitter.”

  “Right. Cool.” I’m not sure what else to say. This is the first time I’ve been recognized outside of a political convention or the immediate six blocks around Parliament Hill. I clear my throat and reach across the table to take Adrienne’s hand. “This is my wife, Adrienne. And I’m Stew Rochard, by the way. That’s my name.”

  The waitress groans and nods. “Okay. Very nice to meet you, and I apologize for blanking on that.” She waves her order pad in the air. “I’ll just get your order going and bring your coffee right over…”

  We watch her go, then Adrienne taps her foot against mine under the table. “Now who’s being hit on?” she teases, smiling at me.

  “What? No.”

  “Yes. That was a nerdy political version of what happened last night.”

  I give my a wife a long, disbelieving look, and she tips her head back and laughs. My phone vibrates, and I pull it out. It’s an email I can reply to after I eat, so I put it away.

  “At least with Gavin out west, I get you mostly to myself for breakfast,” she says lightly.

  I grunt. I don’t like Gavin's unexpected trip. I don’t like what I suspect is the reason behind it.

  Adrienne doesn’t miss any of my reaction, and her expression slides into serious concern. “Anything you can talk about?”

  “Not really.”

  “Boo.” She winks at me. She knows exactly how it is, and really doesn’t mind. But at some point when we’re alone I’m going to tell her that I worry the prime minister is falling head-over-heels in lust with the new intern, and there’s no way that ends well.

  “You make me extraordinarily happy, you know that?” I bracket her legs with mine under the table. “And at times like this, I’m grateful for what we have. I promise I know how much you’ve been carrying our family.”

  “So serious over breakfast,” she murmurs, but she doesn’t look away.

  “I’m always serious about you. Have been since the first moment I laid eyes on you.” She’d been a first year university student. I was an upper-year and tried to show off. Big man on campus. Hard to do with my tongue hanging out of my mouth.

  She’d had my number from the start. “I remember.”

  I like the way her eyes go soft. “Good.”

  Our food arrives then, and we take our time, having a second cup of coffee before we finally settle the bill and head out on foot.

  I swear Adrienne’s disappointed that the waitress doesn’t try to slip me her number when we leave. I take her hand. “What’s next?”

  We go to the Royal Ontario Museum for a temporary exhibit about tattoos from around the world. Tattoos: Ritual. Identity. Obsession. Art the brochure says. We wander through the quiet exhibit hall for an hour, sometimes together and sometimes drifting apart. She takes my hand as we head upstairs to see dinosaur bones and leans in. “Remember when you wanted to get a tattoo?”

  “Back in university?”

  She winks at me. “Yeah.”

  It’s at this point I realize two important things. First, my wife was long overdue for a weekend away, just the two of us. And second, deep down she’s still that angsty rocker girl I fell in love with. Not so hidden at the moment.

  She was more Guns N’ Roses to my extensive Queen collection. I fell in love with her plaid shirts and Doc Martens, and kept that secret to myself until after I’d gone crazy for her clever mind and sexy mouth, too.

  “I’m pretty sure I just said that to impress you.” I curl a strand of her hair around my finger. “What did I want to get?”

  “I don’t remember. Probably something you’d hate now.”

  “We’ve changed a lot from back then, but…” I tug her close. “This is the same. This will always be the same.”

  Halfway up the wide, sweeping stairs of the Royal Ontario Museum, I kiss my wife, and it’s not quick or discreet or polite. Life is too short for that. I make her breathless and I make her blush.

  And that’s exactly the same as it used to be, too.

  Chapter 6

  ADRIENNE

  Our check out time at the hotel is noon. At ten minutes to, we’re making out like teenagers in a fogged-up car, knowing curfew is about to crash down hard on us.

  Hard being the operative word.

  “What time is our train?” Stew asks, his voice rough as he slides his thigh between mine. His hands are everywhere, making me warm and distracted and trembly in the best way.

  “In an hour. And I think the maid’s going to come in here and start cleaning around us if we don’t leave…” But I don’t push him away. I want to soak up every last moment of privacy, too.

  We spent most of yesterday outside, doing grown-up explore-the-city type things. We came back to the room for a sex-filled nap attempt before dinner, then headed out again. His phone rang three times, and he had a bunch of quick email breaks. But for the most part, work was out of sight and out of mind. And when he wasn’t being dragged into urgent problems, I was the centre of his day and the object of all his attention.

  It definitely refilled my well in more ways than one. Emotionally, sexually, adventurously…

  And now we need to go home, because we have jobs and kids and a life. But we’re going home together, and that’s a gift, too.

  “I had an amazing weekend,” I whisper, brushing my lips along his jaw.

  “I want to make rash promises about doing this again.” Stew strokes my cheek, then lifts my chin with his knuckle so he can kiss me.

  I open for him, curling my tongue against his, meeting him hungry stroke for hungry stroke. It’s going to be ages until we can do this again. But that’s on me as much as him. “Next time, I’ll invite you along,” I murmur. “And maybe we can do it in Ottawa, too.”

  He presses his erection into me. “Oh, we’re doing it in Ottawa. Tonight.”

  “Not it. Well, yes, it. But this, I mean. We can get a room at the Chateau Laurier. You can stumble over to Zoe’s Lounge after work and pick up the sexy mom in the hoodie at the bar.”

  “Tight t-shirt and Doc Martens.”

  “Or that.”

  “I love you in whatever you wear, and wherever you are.”

  I burrow close and breath in the scent of his skin. “I love you, too.”

  “I hate you.”

  Stew grins at me as the train rattles towards Kingston. “What?”

  I swallow hard and try to ignore his questing fingers along my thigh. “This is torture.”

  “I’m having fun.”

  “I bet you are.” I stretch my legs out in front of me, trying to ignore how distractingly wet my panties are. In public.

  On a train. With no hope of stripping them off and demanding my husband finish what he started for…I glance at my watch. Another two hours.

  Great.

  Part of me wants the prime minister to have another idea that needs urgent input from his chief of staff. A phone call or an email would distract Stew from his current mission of touching me, lightly and not-so-lightly, innocently and not-so-innocently, all over and as much as he can.

  He started pretty much as soon as we pulled away from Union Station and he realized that our seats were private enough th
at nobody could actually see us unless they walked past us. So he turned toward me and drifted his fingertips along my collarbone before brushing my hair out of the way. “You’re beautiful,” he whispered against the curve of my ear.

  Hot, right?

  So hot.

  Too hot, really. Because he didn’t stop. By the time we stopped in Cobourg, I was warm and shifting in my seat. Belleville? I’d have agreed to whatever the train equivalent of the mile-high club is.

  Now we’re nearing Kingston and I’m crawling out of my skin. It turns out, you can be too turned on. That’s a fun fact I wish I’d never learned.

  “Go back to your book.”

  “No.”

  He laughs quietly. “Why not?”

  “Because you keep reading over my shoulder and doing—” I lower my voice. “Whatever the hero does.”

  “He’s got some great ideas.”

  I’m reading a Regency historical romance. There’s a duke who is slowly seducing a governess. Stew latched on to the idea that I’m a governess of sorts, as a teacher, and he is, of course, the dashing duke.

  He’s certainly playing the rake card to perfection.

  I snap open my book and resume reading.

  So does he, and his hand continues its leisurely crawl from my knee to…oh, God. I turn the page. This isn’t a scene that is going to end with a convenient mishap, ruining the duke’s chance to get a little something something.

  Unlike the governess, though, I’m not wearing voluminous skirts that hide wandering fingers.

  I toss the book onto the opposite seat. “That’s enough of that.”

  “You should have worn a skirt…” He sighs. “Opportunity lost.”

  “We can finish reading that scene together tonight when we go to bed.”

  “Oh, we will.” He wraps his arm around me and tugs me close. “Now let me tell you a story I just thought up…”

  We take a cab home from the train station. I haven’t called about the kids yet, because I’ve been distracted, but real life dictates that we collect them soon—and a big part of me is keen to hear how their weekend was.

  Another part of me wants to tie my husband to our bed first and teach him just how bossy my inner governess can be.

  After we pay the cabbie, I fire off a deliberately vague text to my sister.

  Adrienne: How’s it going? Heading home.

  Sandra: ETA? The boys just settled down with sandwiches and a movie.

  I glance at my husband, unlocking the front door to our house. The right thing to do here would be to tell the truth.

  I do the opposite. It still feels right.

  Adrienne: Should be home in an hour or so. Do you want us to come pick them up?

  Sandra: I can bring them over. Hour and a half sound good?

  It sounds perfect.

  “Who was that?” Stew asks as I hurry up the walk.

  “Kid update. We’ve got ninety minutes to finish what you started on the train.”

  Chapter 7

  STEW

  I know she thinks we need to rush, but as soon as Adrienne closes the front door, I take her bag from her hand and set it down. We’re going to do this right, and we’re going to do it slow.

  “Now Miss Adrienne, whatever has you so worked up?”

  She gives me an incredulous look. Incredulous, but aroused. Her cheeks are flushed and her eyes are bright. My dirty, delightful wife. “I am not an innocent governess and you are no rakish duke. Take off your clothes.”

  I ignore her and press her back against the wall, looming over her. “I love your bossy temper.”

  She reaches for my belt. “Fine, you can leave your clothes on.”

  Ha. I catch her wrists and pull her hands up between our bodies. “Nice try.” I kiss her fingers. “An hour and a half, you say?”

  She takes a deep, tormented breath and gives me a pleading look. “Yes.”

  “Do you think I’m terribly cruel?” I move on to the knuckles, nipping at them as she glowers at me.

  “Uh, yeah.”

  I turn her wrist over so I can kiss the exposed, soft skin on the inside of her arm. “I can’t help it, you know. You’re too beautiful not to touch. To tease.”

  “But now we’re alone,” she whispers, sliding her hand out of my grasp and winding her arms around my neck. I let her. I’d let her do anything she wanted.

  Almost anything.

  She doesn’t get to be in charge right now. I take her wrists and push them over her head, against the wall. “Exactly. We’re alone. And awake. No kids. In our home. You want to know why I couldn’t keep my hands off you on the train? Because I knew that for all the amazing sex we had this weekend, when I got you home, I’d get to make love to you. I thought it might be tonight, after you’d had to slide back into being mom, and I wanted you to hum all evening with the awareness of just how much I want you.”

  Something bright flashes in her eyes. Excitement, maybe, but something else, too.

  I lean down and drag my lips along her jaw. “We don’t need to escape from reality,” I say roughly as I breathe her in. “I want you just as much, here.”

  She exhales quickly. Relief. That’s the something else I'd seen in her eyes, and can feel rolling off her body now as she presses against me. “Same.”

  I hold her there, my reluctant prisoner, while I trace my fingers down her body and tease them under the hem of her shirt. She’s soft and delicious. I move my hand back up again, this time under the fabric, against her skin. I find her bra and cover the swell of her breast with my palm, not missing that her nipple is pulled tight already, a hard nub that must send jolts of awareness to her core as I rub against it.

  More than twenty-five years we’ve been doing this, and I’ll never tire of that sex-glazed look in her eye, the way she goes soft and wanting when I work her up. Sure, I teased her on the train, but this is something else. This is foreplay with intent. So much intent.

  I watch her melt for me. I imagine heat stoking inside her, turning her liquid from the inside out, and I amp up my touches. Firmer, brusquer. I pinch her nipple now, through the fabric of her bra, and she gasps.

  Music to my ears.

  I cover her mouth with mine, swallowing her desperate pleas for more. I kiss her until a primal need to take my wife—hard, fast, and so thoroughly she can’t walk for a while—is thudding in my veins.

  Wrenching myself away from her, I grab her hips and pivot us both, pointing her toward the stairs. “Up you go.”

  She scampers ahead of me and I follow, once again unable to keep my hands off her.

  In our room, she moves to close the door behind us.

  “Leave it open,” I tell her, and she gives me a wide-eyed, disbelieving look.

  I don’t know why it matters, but it does.

  She swallows hard, but doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t close the door, either.

  “If they come home, the front door is locked. We’ll hear them better this way.” Lies. I like the element of danger way more than I’m being a sensible father right now.

  Her eyes light up, knowing. She sees me to my core, my wife does. She licks her lips. “You’d like it if I had to suddenly be quiet, wouldn’t you?”

  “I’d hate it,” I growl as I nudge her onto the bed. “Because it would mean we’ve been interrupted, and I very much want to wring you out completely before the kids come home.”

  I fall on top of her, being careful not to be too heavy as I fit us together. Still too many clothes in between. I peel her shirt up as she fumbles with my belt. We roll sideways in a tangle of limbs and clothes, until we’re both naked and I’m between her thighs, my cock jutting up against her belly as I kiss her again.

  Never enough kisses.

  Never enough time.

  So much to pour into forty-five hours. Too much to say and words are definitely inadequate.

  One last attempt to show her everything she means to me before this window of opportunity, this gift of time, closes
.

  She curls her legs around me as I work my way down her body, until my hands are full of her breasts and my face is buried in the sweet valley between them. I nuzzle her there, where her skin is sensitive and I know it’ll make her shiver. Then I lick my way over the field of delicious goosebumps on her skin, tasting every inch of her breasts before I reach her tight, ready nipple.

  Ready for me to circle, to tease.

  Ready for me to swallow, to pulse against my tongue as I suck on her flesh.

  My wife.

  She reaches between us, and I let her circle my erection with her clever, knowing fingers. She strokes me with a familiarity that makes my knees weak. Her thumb strokes the pulsing vein on the underside of my cock, and I grow harder still. I’m so ready, but I want her on fire before I take her. I want her so hot that I can be rough, that she’ll need me to be that for her.

  And in return, she can set me ablaze, too. Consume me with her heat and her beauty. I’ll thunder into her and she’ll wrap around me, taking every last inch.

  I duck my head to her other breast, loving that nipple with my mouth, my tongue, my teeth, until she’s squirming beneath me, trying to bring us together.

  I smooth my hand over her thigh, opening her wide for my touch. Her curls are slick, that’s how wet she is for me, and inside, she’s hot and soft and grippy as I give her first one, then two fingers.

  “Now,” she breathes, and I’m not going to argue with that.

  Even after a weekend of fucking, the first press feels like there’s no way I’ll fit inside her. I always do. She’s perfect for me. I just need to work for it. She throws her head back and groans in delight at the intrusion. The horny, happy sound only makes me thicker.

  She wiggles beneath me, rolling her hips as we work together to get me deep inside her. Each pulse is wet and warm, like tongues against my cock. Like I’ve got a dozen Adriennes all worshipping my dick, and how do I keep control at an image like that?

  I can’t. No way.

  I hold her still as I piston my hips, rocking all the way into her. She cries out my name, then whispers, “Again, do it again.”