Have Mercy: A Loveswept Contemporary Erotic Romance

by Shelley Ann Clark

  He lost track of time. The lights were hot, and he knew he must be sweating through the back of his shirt, but he didn’t feel it. Carried away on a line he created with Guillermo while Dave and Emme worked embellishments around them, he couldn’t stop his smile.

  They played through the first four songs of the set like they did every night, but somehow the music felt magical, blessed, sacred. Guillermo always tried to rush the beat on the third song, but that night, he kept it steady. Dave hit the perfect balance on his guitar solos; working around the melody without overwhelming it.

  And Emme. Dear God, Emme.

  When she announced the debut of a new song, the audience whooped and cheered. There couldn’t have been more than seventy people in the bar, but Tom could easily imagine an entire auditorium on its feet.

  Emme turned back to the band members. Her blonde hair was haloed by the stage lights, her eyes shadowed with liner. She turned to each of them, nodding at Dave, then Guillermo. When she looked at Tom, her eyes locked with his for a long, charged moment. “Ready?” she asked.

  Hell yes, he thought. “Let’s do it.”

  She grinned, then a full-on smile spread across her face, and she looked so beautiful and impish and powerful that he thought he might tumble off the stage.

  Dave played the first few notes. Then Emme took over, voice aching with desire and regret. Tom could feel the vibrations of the strings under his fingers as he joined in, laying the foundation underneath. The stage wasn’t very big; his back was practically on the drum set, and every time Mo hit the bass drum, he felt the rhythm shimmy up his body from the floor. He lost himself in the feel of it, in the sight of Emme in front of him, owning the crowd, and grew hard inside his jeans, trying not to thrust against the back of his bass guitar. Her voice twined around his body. Thank God his bass covered his lap, or the whole audience would get more of a show than they’d bargained for.

  He’d listened to the lyrics before, of course. He’d heard her sing. He’d helped write the bass line. But with it all put together, the energy of the crowd, the power of her personality over the whole room … as she sang about asking the Lord for mercy for the man she was about to hurt, all he could think was, Please let that man be me.

  Dave and Guillermo weren’t speaking to her again.

  Emme sighed and curled up in the van seat. They’d at least had a night in a hotel before leaving for the next tour stop, but the long and pointed silence was beginning to wear on her, and more than that, was beginning to make her angry.

  “Lord Have Mercy” was a good song. They couldn’t have asked for a better debut for it. She hadn’t been so proud of anything she’d written since “Walking Away,” and that was saying something. They’d sold more copies of their album at their last show than they had at any of the previous shows, including ones in bigger cities.

  Tom had been profiled on the SoundGap website, and good reviews of her album were popping up in unexpected places. She’d even had a show review that had called their work “transcendent.”

  She knew they were afraid of another Indelible Lines-style disaster, but she’d learned her lesson. She didn’t mess with married men, and she didn’t mess around with coworkers. She had promised Dave that she wouldn’t. Not even if she wanted to hold Tom down and lick his skin until he begged for her; wanted to use her mouth on him until he tangled his fingers in her hair, and then stop, and then do it again and again and again until he exploded all over her; wanted to make him watch as she touched herself, taunting him with what he couldn’t have the way his very presence taunted her day after day and night after night.

  Instead, she channeled all her longing into songs.

  Mississippi sped by outside her window. It looked different in the daylight; a little more rundown, maybe, a little less mysterious. Every state they’d been through so far had its own color scheme. Kentucky’s was green, variations on the shade and intensity of a single color. Tennessee had added brown and rust to the green.

  Mississippi had its own palette that shifted as they drove. Her first impression of it had been the varying shades of blue and indigo of a night drive; during the day, and the closer they got to Alabama, the redder the ground got. It wasn’t the dark delta mud she’d expected from listening to blues songs, but nearer the Alabama clay she thought she’d find farther east.

  Emme didn’t dare look over at Tom. Every time she did, lately, Dave or Guillermo seemed to notice. So instead, she watched weathered power lines racing by beyond the glass, humming to the rhythm of the tires against the asphalt.

  They were right, of course. It had only been three years since the breakup of Indelible Lines. She’d only just wrestled her image back from the gossip blogs, and she was still getting death threats on Twitter from distraught fans. Every time she thought she’d learned to live with it, some new reminder reopened a wound she had assumed was healed.

  Besides, as frustrating as it was, there was something … delicious about wanting but not having. She’d been in a near-constant state of arousal since they’d debuted “Lord Have Mercy.” Her body had roared to life and was determined, it seemed, to remind her of its existence.

  Of its needs and wants.

  Emme turned away from the window, risking a glance over at Tom. The collar of his shirt was open at his throat, just the tiniest hint of chest hair showing above the placket. She wanted to bury her face in it and inhale his scent. Would he close his eyes in pleasure, or would he smile with the full force of his dimples turned in her direction?

  When she heard Dave’s cry of, “Shit. Hold on,” from the front seat, some guilty part of her immediately assumed that he had read her thoughts, had turned around to find her ogling Tom and decided to turn the van around in the middle of the road like an angry parent. It took her a moment to register the drunken lurch of the van that threw her against the door, and the responding swerve as they skidded toward the shoulder of the road. The body of the van tipped dangerously as she dug her fingers into the armrest, every muscle clenched in an effort to hold herself in place.

  The sudden stillness didn’t register until the van had slid to a stop. The radio was still on, Gram Parsons singing about sin, but no one moved for a solid minute. It struck Emme as strange, that the radio could still be playing even with the front half of the van resting awkwardly in a ditch.

  She opened her door and jumped out on trembling knees. They’d left early enough, and their next tour stop was close enough, that time shouldn’t be too much of an issue if they could get a tow truck soon. She was already calculating wait and arrival times in her head when Tom touched her shoulder.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  Emme rolled her shoulders, taking inventory of her body. Shaky, yes. Filled with adrenaline that would wear off and leave her wiped out and crabby, yes. Her muscles would be sore from the seat belt, but she wasn’t injured. “I’m fine. Everyone else?”

  As her bandmates nodded their assent, Emme surveyed the damage. The rear passenger side tire lay in strips across the road, and they would definitely need a tow out of the ditch, but otherwise, the van didn’t look the worse for wear. “Dave? What happened?”

  Dave’s face turned so red it was nearly purple. “Well, we blew a tire for sure.”

  Guillermo cleared his throat. “And …,” he prompted.

  Dave glanced at Guillermo, then back down at the ground. “AndIwastryingtoavoidanarmadillo,” he said in one rush.

  “What?”

  “I was trying to avoid an armadillo.”

  Emme looked back at the road. “I don’t see one.”

  Mo smothered a laugh with a cough. “It was there,” he said. “Seriously. I saw it, too.”

  Emme wasn’t sure if she wanted to laugh or shake them. Maybe both. After all her careful planning, to have part of her tour torpedoed by an armadillo? She pulled out her phone. “So we call AAA, get the van towed, and get a new tire. We’re back on the road in … four hours, max?” She glanced down at the screen.
“I have … no bars. How is it possible to have no bars?”

  The three men simultaneously whipped out their phones.

  “No signal here, either,” Dave said.

  “Mo? Tom?” Emme felt herself growing frantic, but pushed the feeling down into her stomach.

  Both men shook their heads.

  Emme forced herself to relax her clenched fists. “Oh for God’s sake. What century are we in?”

  Guillermo shrugged. “It’s Mississippi,” he said, as if that explained everything.

  Emme surveyed their surroundings. The air was sticky and unseasonably hot, mosquitoes buzzing even in the early afternoon sun. They hadn’t passed a house in some time; just endless rows of plank fencing and weathered, leaning power line poles.

  “I think we passed a house about three songs ago,” Dave volunteered. “Back north. Maybe fifteen minutes driving?”

  Emme took a deep breath. “Good. Okay, then, you and Guillermo should head in that direction. See if they’ve got a phone you can use. Tom and I will stay here with the van, and if we can flag down a car, we’ll do that. If you haven’t found the house in an hour, turn around and come back here.”

  Her tone brooked no argument, but Dave tried anyway. “I think you should come with us,” he said. “Tom can stay here with the equipment.”

  Emme didn’t want to admit that part of her motivation was getting Tom alone. It ought to be the last thing on her mind when everything else was falling apart, but somehow, it had crept back up to the fore, and she really didn’t like Dave pointing that out. There had to be some kind of logical argument for staying with the van, but in her frustration, she couldn’t for the life of her think of one. “I ought to stay here,” she said. “Because …”

  Tom interrupted her. “Because it’s ninety degrees outside and probably ninety percent humidity, and if we do manage to get to Tuscaloosa tonight, she’ll need to be as fresh as possible for her performance. People are paying to see her, guys. Not us. She’s the one in front of us on that stage, and I can’t believe you’d expect her to walk for two hours in this heat and then perform at her best tonight. Jesus.”

  Emme had never heard him sound so angry. She liked it. She really, really liked it. His fists were actually clenched, his jaw tight and stern-looking. She wanted to reward him for going into battle on her behalf.

  Guillermo nodded. “It’s true,” he said. “We’re not called Emme and Her Amazing Band. It’s Emme. You’re allowed to be a bit of a diva when the circumstances call for it.”

  Dave rolled his eyes. “Just remember, I’m not the one who called you a diva,” he said. “Mo, you coming?”

  Guillermo looked back at Emme. He raised his hands, as if to apologize, before turning and following Dave up the road.

  Emme watched as they disappeared over the hill. “Well.” She let out a huff of air. With nothing to do but wait, a little of the adrenaline racing through her drained out, replaced by anxiety with no outlet. Knees suddenly melty, she sank down onto the grass of the embankment beside the road.

  Seeing Tom standing above her didn’t help the nervy feeling in her stomach. “Sit,” she said.

  He did, folding his legs up in front of him. The humidity had stuck his shirt to his back, and without thinking, she reached over and pulled the fabric away from his skin. Even sweaty, he smelled clean, like laundry soap and sun. If she closed her eyes next to him, she’d imagine clotheslines and just the tiniest hint of cigarette smoke.

  Tom’s back stiffened under her touch, and she pulled her fingers away.

  He cleared his throat, then tapped his fingers on his knee. “So,” he said. He looked over at her, then away, before pulling a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, raising one to his lips, and lighting it. “Do you mind?” he asked.

  “You always ask permission,” Emme said.

  Tom shrugged. “Of course. It’s polite.” He slid the cigarette between his lips, inhaled deeply. The smoke curled out around his nostrils. “It’s a disgusting habit,” he said. “And hell on your voice.”

  Emme nodded. “So why do you do it?”

  She pulled up a blade of grass as he thought, fingers tearing it into strips. He loves me, he loves me not, her brain chanted as she ripped the blade to shreds.

  Tom’s inhales and exhales followed a pattern, a rhythm syncopated with smoke. The way his lips caressed the filter as he put it to his mouth, his deep inhale, eyes closed with pleasure, and the release of smoke, curling lazily through the heavy air all combined to make a thudding pulse of want start up low in her body. His fingers held the cigarette gently, almost delicately, and the flick of his wrist as he tapped ash off the tip was practiced and smooth, not the kind of businesslike movement most smokers employed. She knew smoking was disgusting. It caused cancer. It wasn’t sexy. There was no way she found it sexy.

  Maybe she found it just a little bit sexy.

  Tom finally answered. “I’m … I’m not really good at moderation,” he said. “When I get started with something, I tend to go overboard. It’s something I know about myself, so there’s a lot I just don’t let myself do. But when you’re twelve and spending most of your time in a bar, and you want to grow up but don’t want to be a drunk …” He stubbed out the cigarette. “I’m just glad I knew not to start drinking. At least this’ll kill me slow.”

  Not good at moderation. The thought, for some reason, oozed into Emme’s body like warm syrup. Of course he wasn’t; he’d told her before that he’d practiced until his fingers bled. What else would he do over and over again, given the chance?

  Tom looked vulnerable and a little lost sitting there under the Mississippi sun. His hair was mussed and sticking up in all directions; his shirt had come untucked in the back. He couldn’t seem to meet her eyes.

  He’s lonely, she thought.

  Emme was, too. She’d been lonely on tour before; it was the oddest feeling, spending every waking moment with three other people, and every other waking moment in front of a hundred more, and still feeling like an island. It led to dangerous decisions. She knew that from experience.

  Her hand reached out, almost of its own accord, to trace the lines of his tattoo, when he suddenly chuckled. “Son of a bitch.”

  Emme drew her hand back, but it didn’t look like he was talking to her. Instead, he pointed. “Think that’s the culprit?”

  She followed the line of his arm with her gaze. She really didn’t want to look away from that masterpiece of sinew and muscle, but then she saw where he was pointing.

  An awkward, lumbering shape made its way off the grass and onto the asphalt of the road. It looked like a cross between a dinosaur and a possum, and it was in no hurry. It snuffled, shuffled, and crawled around the tires of the van.

  “There really is an armadillo,” she said, and the whole situation struck her as completely absurd. She was sitting on an embankment next to a deserted Mississippi road, sweaty hair stuck to the back of her neck, watching her damaged tour van filled with twenty thousand dollars’ worth of equipment, trying not to touch her new band member, all because of an animal that looked like a tiny dinosaur.

  The laughter started in her gut and bubbled up from there until it burst out of her. She laughed so hard she fell back onto the embankment, her T-shirt smudging in the grass. She laughed until tears ran down her face at the thought of that silly, scuttling creature having so much power and so little idea of it.

  Tom felt something inside himself unfurl at the sight of Emme laughing, her head thrown back, her body laid down in the grass. He wanted to burrow next to her until he shared her laughter, shared her breath, shared the tremble of her shoulders as her body shook. He even caved in to the temptation far enough to lean back, lying down in the grass on his side, so he could look at her.

  Once her fit of mirth had tapered off, she turned to face him, head propped on her arm, elbow in the grass. “Sorry.”

  Tom grinned back at her. The sight of her lounging on the ground next to him, the inwar
d curve of her waist emphasized by her position, her breasts straining against the thin, damp fabric of her worn and sweaty T-shirt, was something beyond temptation. That fabric clung so closely to her skin that it managed to reveal and conceal in equally frustrating parts. He found himself wanting to lift up that shirt and nuzzle her belly, nip at the waistband of those magnificent tight jeans, maybe drag them down over her hips with his teeth.

  And even with her hair falling out of its ponytail as she lay flopped on the grass next to him, there was still something commanding in her eyes. He liked it, liked that she could somehow still be in charge even after a fit of the giggles worthy of a teenage girl.

  “Don’t apologize,” he said.

  God, he just wanted to know everything about her. What she liked, what she hated. How she’d become who she was. It had to be dangerous, this wanting, because it felt like he stood at the edge of a giant yawning canyon and he wanted it to swallow him up.

  Tom was startled by the touch of her fingertips on his forearm. She traced the line of his tattoo with her fingernail gently, so very gently, that he had to close his eyes for a minute.

  “When did you get this?” she asked softly.

  He couldn’t tell her all of his history. It would be like popping a boil onto someone—disgusting and rude and wrong. And then she would realize that she was too good for him, and he’d be stuck watching her from a distance, like the fans in her audience.

  Tom closed his fingers over hers, just for a moment. “I just told you about smoking. It’s your turn. We’ll trade. Question for question.” His voice sounded hoarse and unfamiliar, and her fingers felt small and delicate beneath his.

  Emme pulled her fingers away. “Okay.”

  There were a million questions on the tip of his tongue, but the one he blurted out made him sound like a lovesick puppy. “I’ve heard you sing. I’ve seen you write songs that … blow me away, to be honest. And you’ve organized this tour like some kind of military assault. So my question is … is there anything you’re bad at?” Ugh. Way to be cool.