Most.
Not tonight.
Simon moved across the stage in the dark and slung his arm around Nick’s neck to drag him closer to say something in his ear. The front of the crowd could still see them and lost their marbles. As ever, when it came to Nick and Simon, the women were often enamored to a crazy degree.
When he was done with Nick, he zeroed in on her.
He crooked his finger. Part of her wanted to break it, but there was always a stronger part of her that couldn’t resist that cocky lead singer forever lurking under Simon’s skin. She could honestly say she’d missed it—missed that version of him—for a damn long time.
Was this in response to Ian?
And would it ultimately do more harm than good?
The concerned wife side of her wanted to soothe and ask questions.
The hot-blooded woman who’d tossed sense to the wind when she hooked up with this man-child wanted to feed off of it. Wanted it to fill her up until she was screaming.
She let her violin hang by her side as she slowly moved toward him. The murmurs between the band rose, and the moody drums kicked her heart into overdrive. At the fringes of her periphery, she noticed Gray move behind Jazz on the ramp. His sultry guitar filled the room. Nick layered his grittier playing over it until the sound resonated in a bastardized choir that only Oblivion could create.
The audience went nuts when they recognized the song.
It wasn’t one of those songs that took the world by storm, but it was powerful. And Simon’s box mic filled his hand as he dragged her into a dreamy dance. The lights shifted into that smoky blue as he sang the song to her.
“Arsonist’s Lullaby” was a favorite of theirs. She’d even found a way to insert her strings into the song when they’d started playing with setlists again. But there was no room for her tonight. Not with the way Simon was singing to her.
Instead, it felt intimate in a way that crawled under her skin and rolled her under his spell.
She hadn’t bothered putting her hair back up after he’d ruined it earlier. It was sticking to her neck and driving her crazy, but right now, it didn’t much matter. Not when his hand kept creeping up her back and their slow dance got slower and dirtier.
He pressed his forehead to hers and his voice went another octave lower, making her shiver. The hums in the song vibrated between them, filling his chest until the sound lit up the space between them.
They swayed and spun until the microphone cord wound them tighter together. Simon smiled as the song ended. She lifted onto her toes to line them up and she initiated the kiss. Let him feel how affected she was.
His fingers fisted in her hair as the kiss flayed her inside and out. She let herself go and when he tore his mouth from hers as the band started “The Chain,” she could only smile back at him. He was her music tonight.
Every night.
Jazz and Gray started up the iconic opening of the song, and Simon gave her one more quick kiss before detangling from her and running up to meet Gray on the ramp behind Jazz. Nick and Gray dueled it out, extending the guitar solo as Simon picked up the vocals with Jazz and Deacon.
The rest of the night was a speeding train of high octane songs. The crowd loved it, ate every bit of it up, demanding two encores.
Whew.
Luckily, they didn’t have a fan event after the show because they were all wrung out and barely coherent.
Now that the performance was over, the parental types among the band members had gone to relieve the two nannies who traveled with them on tour. That left her and Simon alone as usual.
She slid her hand over her middle. At least for now.
He’d disappeared to shower off the stage. Considering he was closer to naked than most of them by the end of the night, it wasn’t a long process.
In fact, even faster than usual. He came up behind her, curling his arm around her.
“I’ve been hard for you since before that fucking Arsonist’s song. Whatdya say to grabbing an Uber back to the hotel?”
She grinned over her shoulder. “Do they Uber here?”
“What-the-fuck-ever. I just want you under me. Then maybe over me. Then on your fucking knees looking at me like you did just before you kissed me as if we weren’t in front of six-thousand people.”