Falling into You (Falling Stars 3)

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 Mia were lost in each other.

Mel and Linc goofing around.

Rhys had Maggie by the hand and was spinning her fast, catching her, dipping her, spinning her again.

Peals of carefree laughter rode through the air.

Joy. Joy. Joy.

Richard spun me, too, only he stopped me when I was facing away and pulled my back to his chest.

He held me there, rocking us slow, nuzzling at my neck. His lips brushed the shell of my ear.

Chills spread.

“Look at you, Violet Ramsey. So fuckin’ sexy in this dress. Stealing my breath. Stealing my heart. It always belonged to you, and I’m begging you to never give it back.”

His words spiraled around me, and I nodded my head and felt the thunder of his heart where it rampaged at his ribs.

Severity rushed around us.

Threading his fingers through mine, he curled my arms and pressed our hands against my chest, hugging me tight from behind. “Forever.”

Then he extended our left hands out in front of us and brushed his thumb over the bare spot on my ring finger.

Then I was choking over the affection that filled every crevice in my being when I saw what he held in his right hand.

The ring.

The ring that had been his grandmother’s. I hadn’t felt right keeping it, so I’d sent it certified mail to his mama rather than facing any of them to return it.

I’d felt the loss of it ever since.

“This has always belonged to you, Violet. Just like my heart.”

I exhaled a shaky sigh, almost as shaky as my hands, barely able to keep it together when he slipped the ring back onto my finger.

Then he spun me again and curled me into his arms. “You,” he said. “It’s always been you.”Thirty-FourRichardI laid Daisy’s sleeping form on her bed, tugging the shoes she’d danced in all night from her precious little feet.

“She lived that wedding large, didn’t she?” I murmured into the dusky light that barely infiltrated her room, gazing down at the child.

Warmth spread through my veins.

Nothing but an intoxicating drug.

Wanting more and more of it. So reliant on it that the thought of not having it made me think I just might die.

Except this drug?

It wasn’t artificial.

It didn’t numb the pain.

It just cut me wide open and let me feel everything.

All this love that I’d been terrified to feel. To recognize. To hold.

I glanced back at the woman who hovered over by the door, wearing that sexy-ass dress that’d had me hard the entire fuckin’ day.

“I thought she was going to pass out right on the dance floor, she was so tired,” she whispered. “Mama tried to convince her to head back to the house with her, but she wasn’t having it.”