He winked at that.
Everyone laughed as Emily pressed her hand to her mouth and tears sprang to her eyes.
The woman totally surprised.
Royce stood and offered her his hand. She took it, his bride shaking all over as he led her out into the middle of the dance floor.
The guests gathered around the three sides to witness their first dance.
A thrill that drew us to the boundary.
Mesmerized, I watched as Richard wrapped his big hand around the neck of his acoustic guitar and strummed a single chord.
It resonated right through the middle of me.
“We figured since there were a whole ton of people here who could serenade you two on your wedding night, we’d better make good use of it. This is something we put together for y’all. A gift. Our blessing. Our prayer that your lives are filled with all the love the two of you deserve. That all your days are a love song.”
That thrill sizzled as the artists on the stage took their spots, this mesh of country and rock.
I was pretty sure what was getting ready to transpire right then was gonna be straight-up musical history.
Something special. Something you couldn’t experience anywhere else.
Some of the world’s greatest talent standing on one stage and playing for the smallest crowd.
Talk about intimate.
Oh, but that was what it was. The way Royce looked at Emily in that moment. Their worlds colliding in a kaleidoscope of beauty.
He took her in his arms.
Love billowed in the breeze.
Richard and Van both had acoustic guitars, and Lyrik West had an electric. The three of them played through the intricate notes that began the song.
Soft and mesmerizing.
Instantly entrancing.
Their guitars harmonized, while Leif, Zee, and Hunter quietly drummed this rising beat that started off slow and gained in an escalating intensity.
Leif played a bongo with his bare hands, Zee and Hunter with smaller drums that were perched between their knees.
Rhys and Ash both had their basses, and A Riot of Roses’ bassist, Hunter, had gotten ahold of a cello.
Shea Stone began to hum into the mic she held, while her husband gently played the acoustic guitar he’d strapped over his body.
It was like Royce and Emily had their own personal symphony.
Richard pressed his mouth to the mic and began to sing.
That voice rough and sensuous.
Wrapping around me like a dream.
Shadows playing across his gorgeous, chiseled face, his cheeks cut in that severe, distinct fashion.
Still the most beautiful man I’d ever seen.
That voice twisted and rose and lowered, so thick with emotion I could taste it, Shea’s extraordinary voice wrapping with his as they sang this duet that curled and whispered and stunned.
Singing about love.
About cherishing.
About never lettin’ go.
Those sage eyes found me from the stage. The way they always had. As if he felt me. Two of us tied in this tangible, impossible way.
Our connection thrummed.
My love rising, coiling in the air, his meeting mine in the middle.
My stomach tightened and my spirit shook.
His voice, his words, his entrancing, dark beauty the only thing I could breathe.
The cadence lifted and rose and heightened. The music becoming this driving force that shivered and shook and rumbled in the air. Their voices climbed and soared with it, and everyone on stage had begun to sing along with them.
The song reached this crescendo that I was pretty sure left every single person there shaken.
Changed.
Impacted by the magnificence.
My throat tightened, burning like crazy, my chest expanding in time. I pressed my hands against it, trying to keep my heart from bursting right out.
The last note was held. It reverberated the ground and echoed across the fields until it trailed off on the last, tinkling notes.
Everyone stood there gaping.
Royce and Emily were melded together on the dance floor, barely swaying where they’d become one.
“Royce and Emily would now like the rest of their wedding party to join them on the dance floor,” Shea said.
Leif and Rhys hopped down from the stage. Leif went right for his wife and Rhys was grinning like mad when he took Maggie’s hand where she stood off to the side of the dance floor.
Lincoln and Melanie joined them, and then those sage eyes were on me as the man climbed down from the stage and began to stalk my way.
I felt like prey in that moment.
His hunger wild.
His need fierce.
As fierce as the devotion that I could feel drumming from his every step.
Hot hands landed on my hips and his lips landed on my jaw. “You have any idea what it’s like to be on that stage singing and look out and know the most beautiful girl in the world belongs to me?”
Shivers raced.
“Probably a whole lot of the same as looking up on that stage and knowing you belong to me,” I whispered.
The rest of the band members remaining onstage began to play the megahit duet that Shea and Sebastian Stone had recorded together years before.
A song I’d heard what felt like a million times and would never get old.
This soft, seductive love song that filled my ears and struck a chord in my being.
Richard pulled me into the strength of his arms.
A bright burst of light flashed behind my eyes.
Every nerve ending in my body sparked.
He felt it.
Groaned as he tugged me closer, up tight against all that hard, packed muscle that twitched and jerked.
He led me deeper out onto the dance floor, whispered, “I just want to dance with the prettiest girl in the place.”
And tonight—tonight, I was no longer afraid of being that girl.
I curled my fingers into the lapels of his suit jacket, desperate to erase the space. For a way to cling to this feeling. To make it last forever.
He pulled me tighter, wrapping me in strong arms. Where I knew I belonged.
Shea’s voice lamented in our ears, her husband singing low.
Daisy and Anna had joined the couples, the two of them holding each other by the hands and spinning round and round.
Leif and
