Stone Cold Surrender - Brenda Jackson [63]
She met his gaze. “Isn’t it?”
Her question, asked in a quiet, soft voice, stirred something deep inside Stone and he regretted more than ever that he had never told her that he loved her. She needed to know that. She needed to know that each and every time he had made love to her had meant more to him than just satisfying overzealous hormones. Yes, he had taken her with a hunger that had almost bordered on obsession, and he had always been acutely aware of everything physical about her. But he had also been aware of her emotional side. That had been what had first touched his heart. Her love and concern for the people she cared about.
Knowing he needed to get her out of the vicinity of her bedroom, he took her hand in his. “Come on. Let’s go into the living room and talk.”
He led her through the bedroom and into the living room. When she started to sit beside him on the sofa, he pulled her into his arms and placed her in his lap. He smiled at the look of surprise that lit her features.
“Now then, I think I need to get a few things straight up front,” he said.
She lifted a brow. “Such as?”
“The reason I’m here and the reason I hadn’t gotten any sleep in over forty-eight hours. First let me start off by saying I’m not going back to New York or Montana, and I’m sure as hell not going on some European book tour—unless you go to all of those places with me.”
Madison blinked, confused. “I don’t understand.”
Stone chuckled. “Evidently. And in a way it’s entirely my fault. I failed to make something clear to you each time that we made love.”
He saw how her throat tightened when she swallowed. “What?”
He met her gaze and held on to it, locked it with his. “That I love you.”
She pulled back and stared at him in disbelief. “But, but, I—I didn’t know,” she said, her words coming out in a stream of astonished puffs of air.
He skimmed a fingertip across her lips. “That’s why I’m here, Madison, to let you know. I think I fell in love with you the moment I saw you on the airplane, although it took me a while to come to terms with it. I should have told you before I left for New York, but I was in a rush to leave and decided to wait and tell you when I got back. The trip took longer than I expected. I watched that television show, just as you did, but I didn’t think when you heard what the reporter said that you would believe it had anything to do with my relationship with you. When she interviewed me I didn’t want to mention you or tell her how I felt about you, mainly because I wanted to keep things between us private. Besides, I wasn’t sure how you felt about me since we hadn’t talked.”
He leaned over and replaced his fingers with his lips and brushed a kiss across her mouth. “And I still don’t know. I’ve told you how I feel about you, but you’ve yet to say how you feel about me.”
Madison snuggled closer into Stone’s arms and reached up and placed her arms around his neck. The same happiness that shone in her heart was reflected in her eyes. “I love you, Stone Westmoreland, with all my heart. I think I fell in love with you the first moment I looked into your eyes on the airplane, too. And I was so embarrassed when I realized where my hand had been and how close I came to touching a certain part of you. But now I know it went there for a reason,” she said, shifting her body and reaching down to actually touch him.
She smiled upon realizing how hard he was and what that meant. “I didn’t know at the time that that part of you, all of you, was destined to be mine and I feel like the luckiest and the happiest woman in the world.”
Stone groaned out her name as he captured her mouth and deepened the kiss when she