Stone stared at me, those gray eyes edged with disbelief like it wasn’t possible that I’d really said those words.
Then they changed, but it was impossible for me to get a look at him because he dropped his lips to mine and kissed me. It was different than before, wilder, like some part of him had always been leashed, but me saying I loved him had broken that tether.
I was gasping for air by the time he pulled back, his face hard but his eyes bright. I knew that look, though it had a new edge now. He wanted me, right then. Instead of having to push him at all like I might normally, he reached low and grabbed me behind the thighs without a word, hoisting me up. By rote, I wrapped my legs around him, and we were moving.
I bit back a laugh at his quick, determined stride across the deck and through the back door. We made it through the living room and were passing the kitchen when we heard Daz.
“Way to go, Pres,” he cheered.
Stone didn’t so much as break his stride, and that laughter bubbled out of me. Even the desire heating within me at Stone’s need couldn’t overpower the pure joy I was feeling.
Stone loved me.
There was no way to count how many times I’d imagined him saying those words. It was a dream that had started back when he first started coming to the diner, and only gained momentum when he came back into my life. Experiencing it, actually being able to look into his gruff, handsome face while he gave me that, there was nothing on Earth that meant so much to me.
While he climbed the stairs at nearly a run, I realized I’d been wrong, sitting in my car weeks ago, believing God hated me. No, the fact that Stone came barreling into my life again right then showed me it was the exact opposite.
“Stone,” I started, overwhelmed with the need to say it again.
“No,” he bit out, startling me.
“What?”
“You wait. You don’t say those words again until I have you in my bed. You don’t say them until I can look in your eyes while I’m buried inside you when you give me that.”
Did I say the joy was outweighing the desire?
I was wrong.
Very, very wrong.
“Okay,” I squeaked.
“That’s my good girl,” he returned, already alighting at the top of the stairs.
Why did the words only excite me more?
We made it to his room, but he didn’t take me to the bed as promised. He spun us, slamming the door, and then pressing me up against it. Before I could say a thing, his mouth was back on mine. I opened in an instant and his tongue dove inside. His kiss was aggressive, powerful and trying to return it felt like battling. We were fighting to show each other the depth of what we were feeling, and no war had ever been so sweet.
He had me pinned to the door by his hips between my legs, his torso against mine. His hands moved from my thighs, up under the skirt of my dress to cup my ass. They were so big I could feel the tips of his fingers just at the seams of my panties. I wanted so badly for him to move them closer together, to go beneath that fabric and fill me.
Shifting my weight in his hold, he started to move us away from the door. I clutched onto his shoulders hard with both hands, ripping my mouth away to say, “No.”
He slammed me right back against the door, leading with his hips and rubbing against my clit in the best way.
“You want me to take you right here?” he demanded.
“Yes,” I moaned, far past the point of caring how wanton it sounded.
“Fuck, I love you,” he grunted.
I wasn’t able to respond in kind, his order not to be damned when his hand dove in, giving me exactly what I wanted. There was no prelude, just two of his fingers driving inside, filling me up.
“Yes!” I cried out.
“So soaked,” he muttered with approval.
I rocked my hips in the small measure of space I had, desperate for more.
“You want it, don’t you? You can’t even wait.”
“Please,” I begged, the only confirmation I could give.
His fingers left, but he wrapped them around the gusset of my panties. I wondered for an awestruck moment if he was going to rip them off, but he just held them to the side while he rubbed his cock against me until the head caught at my entrance.
“Eyes,” he demanded.
I blinked them open, looking directly into his. Only then did he slam home.
He didn’t hold back. He didn’t wait a moment for me to move, to show I had adjusted to the size of him that still came with a tinge of pain each time. He just gave us both what we needed, slamming in hard and deep.
I dropped my head back against the door, eyes shutting, when he bit out again, “Eyes, Evie.”
I forced my neck to straighten, my focus to fix on his eyes that looked like silver fire.
“You don’t look away,” he ordered. In that instant, he was every bit the president, even if everything but the two of us had ceased to exist.
“Yes, honey,” I answered.
“You keep those fucking eyes on me until you come, and you do that with the words I want to hear on your lips. Yeah?”
His thrusts grew more powerful like he thought I might deny him.
“Yes.”
“You say my name. My real name when you come.”
I blinked in surprise. He’d shared his real name before he’d become Stone, but he told me that didn’t feel like him anymore. I understood, having not been Genevieve since I left home. But to have him now, to share what we were, we both had to give it all.
“Yes.”
Then, he gave it to me harder. A reward.
“Yes, baby,” I moaned, wanting more.
He gave it to me. I kept repeating it, again and again as he drove into me more ferociously each time.
Right when it was too much, when I couldn’t hold back the wave of pleasure that threatened to take me under, I gave him what he wanted.
“I love you, Austin.”
And I erupted.
There was nothing but the cresting ecstasy moving over me, the primal way Stone stared at me as he followed me over, the animalistic sounds he made as he did.
There was no world, no me, no Stone. There was just us. Just this single moment of absolute bliss.
It was a long time before either of us said anything.
Stone had moved us from the door, laying down on the bed with me on top of him, our connection unbroken.
We laid there a long time, coming down from the high before he spoke.
“Never thought I’d have this.”
I was tempted to rise up on my arms to see him, but I sensed he needed to say this without interruption.
“Watched my brothers find it, and I can’t deny I was jealous as fuck. Every night, I’d come back to this bed or crash at the clubhouse telling myself that I had the club. I had this whole family in them, and that was enough. But it wasn’t. Not really.
“Then I met you, and I was so fucked over it. Thinking I shouldn’t have you, thinking it was wrong. I never let myself get far enough past the wanting to realize that you might be it. Exactly what they’d found. Exactly what I’d wanted.”
I felt tears stinging my eyes, but I stayed where I was until one of his big, warm hands cupped my cheek and pulled me to look at him.
“And now here you are. Like a fucking dream every minute. Making me the luckiest bastard around.”
I chuckled even as one of those tears escaped. Then, in a watery voice, I said, “I love you.”
“Lucky as fuck,” he muttered again, “to have that from you. Any man would be. I can hardly believe it’s me.”
I crawled up him a bit, losing a breath when he slid out of me. When I had my lips right over his, I whispered, “It’s you.”
He kissed me, light and sweet. So at odds with what we’d just shared, and so absolutely perfect.
He broke it after a long moment to mutter, “Shits me, ‘cause I don’t want to move from this spot, but we made a mess we gotta go clean up.”
I pinched my lips together. He wasn’t wrong. I could feel the evidence of that on my thighs and spreading even as he said it. My face scrunched up at the feeling, and he smiled. I knew it was because my nose had twitched, something he liked to point out often.
“Yeah, we should do something about that.”
He gave a light, playful swat to my behind. “Up, bunny. Gotta get my girl in the shower.”
I was getting to my feet as he said the last, and I froze for a second. That was something we hadn’t done yet. It wasn’t like I was such a prude I didn’t know it was done. It was simply new.
Stone caught the look of surprise and—I knew, even if I could see it—excitement on my face and grinned. He could be so cocky sometimes. “Yeah, baby. Figured you telling me you love me is worth two new experiences.”
I flushed, glancing at the door, then the bathroom. That grin was still on his face when I looked back.
“I think you’re right.”
He didn’t waste another second before he got up, led me into the bathroom, and introduced me to shower sex.
Which, incidentally, was amazing. Though, door sex would now probably always be my favorite.