Silver Dove (Silver #2)

by E. J. Shortall

  “This is so much better than the loud restaurant,” I sighed, sinking back onto our plush leather sofa. When we’d arrived home we’d decided to totally relax. We opened a bottle of wine, lit a few strategically placed candles, plated up our food and turned on the stereo. “As much as I love Giovanni’s, I think I prefer this tonight.”

  A troubled look passed across Craig’s face for a moment, before being replaced by relief. “I’m sorry! I should have been more thoughtful. I should have known you weren’t up to things like that at the moment.”

  I laughed. “Craig I’m not that depressed that I can’t go out. I don’t need to be cocooned in a padded cell. It was just a bit too loud in there tonight.” My light mood sobered at my next thought. “Jenny’s presence and your admission didn’t exactly help much either.”

  We sat quietly for a moment, soaking up the ambient atmosphere and lost in our own thoughts. I knew I was more than comfortable with our relationship and I doubted that Craig would ever do anything to hurt me, but I needed to make it clear once and for all that keeping secrets was not acceptable.

  “Craig, I’m not asking for all the sordid details of your past, I don’t want to know. But you do need to remember that things that affect us, things that happen now, can’t be kept from me. You have to talk to me, let me in. You can’t shelter me from everything, even if you think it will upset or hurt me.”

  He exhaled in a rush and ran his palms over his face. “You’re right, I should have told you. I didn’t want you worrying about it, or overthinking it, though. You have enough to deal with at the moment.” He paused for a moment. “Come here.” He opened his arms in invitation and I moved quickly to straddle his lap, placing my hands on his solid arms. “I just want to protect you, Ambs, is that such a terrible thing?” he said softly, looking into my eyes.

  “No, I crave it, Craig. I love the way you want to protect me and always try to make me happy,” I whispered as I leaned forward to start feathering kisses along his neck toward his lips.

  “And do I?” he stuttered as I sucked on the skin beneath his ear.

  “Do you what?”

  “Make you happy?”

  “All the time.” I smiled against his neck, thinking about how deliriously happy he made me.

  “Do you know what would make me happy?” Craig asked, trailing his hands up and down my back.

  “What’s that?”

  “Finishing your food. I’m worried about you, baby, you’re not eating enough. I don’t want you wasting away.” There was no chance of that happening, but to appease him I reached behind me to pick up my food. Holding the plate in one hand, I scooped up a forkful of pasta with the other. I brought the fork to my lips and then thought better of it, I wanted some fun. Moving it away and never breaking eye contact with Craig, I teased his lips with the prongs of the fork, leaving a trail of sauce. When he opened his mouth to take in the food, I pulled the fork away and back to my own lips.

  “Are you trying to tease me now?” Craig asked in his seductive low timbre as he trailed his fingertips along the exposed flesh on my chest.

  “No. I thought you wanted me to eat,” I replied pulling the pasta off the fork with my lips.

  “Oh but I think you are. You want to tease me, Pingu.” His fingers smoothed over the soft fabric of my dress and came to rest on the top button. “I think you like to tease me, knowing what it does to me.” He slipped the first button from its hole. “I think you like knowing what your touch does to me.” The second button eased open. “I think you like knowing that when it comes to you and me I have no control.” The third button popped open leaving the floaty fabric to drop away slightly. “I think you know exactly what you do to me.”

  He leaned forward and without warning crashed his lips to mine. His hand felt warm as he snaked one into the gap in my dress to cup my heavy swollen breast through the lace of my bra. His other hand came to rest on the exposed skin of my thigh and slowly he began stroking upward, hitching the hem of my dress higher as he went.

  I closed my eyes, relishing in his magic touch that always made everything come alight. “Craig,” I whispered, unable to speak louder due to the desire swimming through my body leaving every nerve ending on high alert. As his nimble fingers began circling and then pinching my nipple, all thoughts of food disappeared. All I could think about was Craig’s touch, his soft yet powerful caress.

  “Do you know how beautiful you look right now? I don’t think I’ve ever told you how much I love the way you tremble and your cheeks redden when you’re aroused. It’s like you’re embarrassed by the power of your own passion.” I opened one eye and grinned shyly at him.

  “I’m not embarrassed, Craig,” I croaked through a groan as he pinched my nipple a little harder. “I think I got over feeling embarrassed with you a long time ago.” It was the truth. With everything he had done to me, and everything we had shared since we started becoming intimate, there was no room for embarrassment.

  “I’m glad to hear it, because I cannot get enough of this beautiful body. I love how you get goose bumps when I trail my fingers across your perfectly smooth skin.” And as if to prove his point he stroked across the skin of my chest and buried his fingers under the cup of my bra until he was teasing my other nipple, skin on skin. The feeling was exquisite, and true to his word I felt my skin prickle as a shiver made me tremble. “Pingu?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You better put the plate down, baby, before you’re eating your pasta off my chest,” Craig chuckled.

  I opened both eyes and looked down to see my plate tipped and pasta on the verge of spilling over the edge.

  Craig

  “Shit!” Amber cursed as she quickly pivoted round and stretched to put her plate down on the table at the end of the sofa. I hated to admit it but it left me feeling a little conflicted. The thought of having Amber’s tongue licking and sucking a few bits of pasta from my skin caused my dick to harden and throb, as did the sight of her fantastic arse as her dress rode up as she stretched over. But that fucking plate had been getting in the way and needed to go.

  A hiss escaped my lips as she settled back on my lap, rubbing herself against me. I tried to distract my thoughts from her heat by massaging gentle circles in the soft creamy skin on her bare thighs. How I had managed to keep my hands off her until then, I did not know. When she’d first come down the stairs all dressed up and ready to go to Giovanni’s, I’d nearly spun her back round to march her back to bed. Fuck! That dress! The dusky pink colour accentuated her pale skin and blond hair perfectly. It was short but not indecently so, and it floated around the tops of her legs as she walked, tantalising me with glimmers of her inner thighs. And then we had those buttons. The dress was one of those shirt types that had buttons all the way down the front. The trouble was I’d been fantasising about unbuttoning it from the moment I’d first seen her in it.

  As my fingers neared their target, Amber’s hands were suddenly on mine halting my movements, digging into my flesh with her long nails almost painfully. My eyes flew to hers. Mine were no doubt showing the confusion I was feeling, hers showing an almost pained expression. I raised a brow in silent question and she simply offered a slight shake of her head and a shrug of her shoulders. She’d never rejected my advances before.

  “I’m sorry,” she breathed against my ear as she leaned in and began to undo the buttons of my shirt. “I’ll be all yours again soon, I promise.”

  I huffed out a frustrated breath and dropped my head back against the sofa. I’d never been with a woman long enough to have to deal with monthly abstinence and it pissed me right off. “Craig?” At Amber’s quiet question I opened my eyes and peered down at her beautiful face.

  “I’m sorry, Pingu! It’s just frustrating to know I can’t be with you when I want nothing more than to sink myself deep inside you, to feel absolutely no distance between us.” In both the metaphorical and physical sense, I thought.

  No matter how hard I tried to be the tough
and powerful businessman who let nothing and nobody get to him, the one thing that was my undoing was Amber hurting. As ironic as it seemed, she was the only one - my soothing balm - that could calm me.

  That delicious blush coloured her cheeks again as she smiled shyly and continued undoing my shirt buttons. “I don’t see why you have to lose out on your pleasure because of me.”

  My breath hitched when she reached down and popped the button on my trousers and started to lower the zipper. She was moving so slowly I wanted to bat her hand out of the way and do it myself. Instead I dropped my hands to my sides and stretched and then fisted my fingers repeatedly in an attempt to refrain from taking over. I wanted to give Amber the time to do whatever it was she felt she needed. “You still need your pleasure, Craig,” she whispered seductively against my ear. Her hand dipped inside my boxers and she circled her fingers around my dick in a firm grasp. All the air in my lungs vanished in one big whoosh, leaving me fighting to breathe.

  “Amber-”

  “No, Craig. No talking. Just feel, let me do this for you.” She shuffled her sexy arse back toward my knees, and then momentarily abandoned me as she tapped my thighs to get me to rise up so she could tug my trousers and boxers down. Then her hand was back on me, stroking softly as she leaned forward and placed her lips over mine. I groaned as she nipped on my bottom lip at the same time she added extra pressure to her grip. She was torturing me with steady yet powerful strokes and I wanted nothing more than to take back control and return the favour. Instead I moved my hands into her hair and held her head firmly to take everything she was offering.

  She was taking her cues from me, because as soon as my hips bucked and I groaned loudly against her mouth, she sped up her movements, twisting her fist and gripping harder. Far too soon I was feeling that familiar tingling sensation radiating out from my lower spine, and the tightening in my balls threatened to steal my breath. “Fuck, Ambs,” I shouted as I pulled my head back gasping for breath. No sooner had my head hit the back of the sofa then she was leaning forward sucking on the flesh beneath my ear and adding extra pressure to her grip. “Ambs, I’m gonna-” Too late! The pressure became too great and I exploded, coming violently onto her hand and over my stomach.

  “Shit, Ambs,” I murmured, panting and fighting to catch my breath, “That felt-” I had no words. Nothing could ever describe the true feeling of bliss of being with her. It was just… right!

  Amber smiled and kissed her way up to my lips. “You’re welcome,” she whispered and pressed her lips to mine. Moving my hands behind her back I tugged her in close and kissed her deeply, my tongue duelling with hers.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Amber

  The house was quiet and still when I woke on Monday morning. Craig had left at an ungodly hour for an early meeting to finalise an acquisition bid he’d been working on. I vaguely remembered him creeping out of bed, hearing the shower turn on, and then him mumbling an ‘I love you’ as he kissed me goodbye. I’d rolled over onto his side of the bed, snuggling back under the warm duvet and tried to drift back off to sleep, even though I knew I had to get up. I wasn’t prepared to acknowledge the day ahead.

  It was my first day back at work since before the winter break and to say I was apprehensive about going was a huge understatement. I didn’t even know why. It wasn’t like anything that had happened was connected to work at all, but for some reason the thought of being around people filled me with dread.

  Feeling only slightly more at ease as I stepped into the kitchen after showering, I noticed a single red rose in a slim vase and a piece of paper. They stood out against the stark black of the granite countertop on the island. A bright beacon in an otherwise dark and desolate landscape.

  “I’m sorry I’m not there to share a morning coffee with you, believe me I would much rather be with you than where I am. Go and knock them dead, Pingu, you’ll be fine. I love you! C xx.”

  Smiling at his thoughtfulness I made my coffee, feeling a little lighter and ready to tackle the day.

  I could have done without the dreaded ‘Welcome back’ staff meeting. All I wanted to do was get to my office and bury myself in schedules and planning. These meetings were always mind numbingly boring and draining, especially when everyone was suffering with post-Christmas blues. I looked around the crowded room and noticed most of my colleagues were sitting quietly, nursing their hot drinks and looking as though they would rather be anywhere but there. With my own steamy cup of coffee in hand, I greeted a few of them as I ambled over to a vacant seat and settled in. I would no doubt be there for at least thirty minutes listening as our head teacher, Hillary, droned on about stuff we either had under control or were already doing.

  As soon as she started speaking and I heard the word success, I tuned out. It was the same message delivered time and time again with a slightly different slant than the last time. Nothing ever changed though. My mind drifted back to the strange weekend of discoveries and revelations. I’d been left totally bewildered and even more confused and guilt ridden than before. If only James had been up front and honest with me, and told me what he’d needed money for, I would have given it to him, no question. I knew we had a difficult relationship, but I would have embraced the fact that he’d found someone he was happy with and that they were having a child together.

  ‘I have a niece,’ I thought to myself.

  That fact still blew my mind.

  I smiled to myself thinking of Giana’s bright eyes staring up at me and of how sweet she looked curled up asleep with Craig. With a quick glance in Hillary’s direction I noted she was still rambling on about achievement. It was dull as dishwater. Returning my gaze to the window, I watched as the clouds rushed by, the dark stormy ones mixing with and swallowing up the lighter fluffy white ones. Wasn’t that what life was like, happiness and feeling light often being engulfed by the storm constantly brewing? I felt like one of those little white clouds. I was being chased by the darkness and torment of the storm clouds of grief and guilt, and if I wasn’t careful they would swallow me whole. What I needed to remember, though, was that above all that bleakness was a bright blue sky and sunshine. Soon the clouds would disperse and it would be bright and sunny again.

  “You going to sit there all day, Miss?” Steph, my colleague and friend laughed pulling my attention away from the window. Looking around I noted everybody was dispersing, heading off to their classrooms or offices. “You were in a serious daze just then,” she continued.

  “Oh, God. Was it that obvious? Did anyone else notice?” Panicked, I darted my eyes over to Hillary, hoping and praying she hadn’t noticed my lack of interest.

  “Nah, you’re good.” She leaned in closer and looked around as if scoping out the area for spies. “She went on and on about the same old shit. I’m sure we know more about the workings of this school than she does,” she whispered, and quickly looked around again. “Rumour has it that she’s been involved in some shifty dealings. We might end up with the inspectors in earlier than we thought.” Great, just what I needed! I didn’t think I could take the pressure of preparing for an inspection right then.

  “And this has come from whom?” I asked, hoping it was Bette on reception. She was a lovely old lady but usually got things confused and ended up misinforming people of what was going on. She’d been the catalyst of many of the juicy Chinese whispers that went on around the place.

  “Martin mentioned something to Bette who then told me.” She shrugged.

  “Steph, you do realise she probably has everything confused, don’t you?”

  “Maybe, maybe not, I guess time will tell. Anyway, I just wanted to say I heard about your loss. I’m so sorry. And on New Year’s Eve too, that’s just bad luck. If there is anything I can do…” She shrugged. With a gentle pat on my arm and a small smile she turned and walked away, leaning in to another colleague to no doubt spread the gossip.

  Bad luck? Bad frigging luck? How the heck was your brother being brutally beaten on Ne
w Year’s Eve, or any day for that matter, bad luck? I took a deep breath and closed my eyes to stop myself from shouting back to her what I really wanted to. Instead I tried to imagine those deep dark clouds outside parting, leaving the sun to shine down on us.

  When I felt my anger had dispersed somewhat and I felt I wouldn’t bark at anyone who merely looked my way, I opened my eyes and walked back to my office, mentally psyching myself up for the day ahead.

  My work day had been seven hours of pure hell. Not only had the staff been suffering the January blues, it appeared the students were feeling it too. Struggling through the day, I’d bitten my tongue several times to stop myself from doing or saying something that would probably have gotten me into a whole heap of trouble. So it was a huge relief to get back to the sanctuary of home. It didn’t matter if Craig was there or not, just being around his things, feeling his presence, always calmed me and allowed me to breathe more easily.

  With a drink settled by my side, and papers scattered across the island, I settled in to do the work I’d been too eager to get away from at school.

  I looked up from the marking in front of me when I heard the front door open. “Amber?” Craig shouted.

  “In here,” I called out, making yet more notes on how Billy needed to concentrate on his work more and chat less.

  I dropped the paper on the pile and peered up waiting for Craig. I noticed the smirk on his face and mischievous glint in his eyes as soon as he came into view from down the hallway. He’d taken off his jacket and was loosening his tie as he approached, looking every bit the sexy, commanding businessman.

  Moving in behind me, he bent forward to place a kiss on the top of my head. “Hi, Pingu. How was your day?”

  “It was okay I guess, busy. You?” My eyes followed him as he walked to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of water, offering me one with a shake of it in the air. I shook my head no and looked back at the papers in front of me, sighing at the work I had left to do.