Have Mercy: A Loveswept Contemporary Erotic Romance

by Shelley Ann Clark

  “But I want you to watch. Please, Emme. Please touch me, suck me. Watch me. Please.” His voice was strained and as ragged as she felt inside, and she almost stopped him, but instinct held her back. He likes it. He wouldn’t be this worked up if he didn’t like it.

  “I’m right here,” she said instead, and then succumbed to the urge to soothe him. She ran a hand through the fur on his belly, feeling his muscles twitch and flinch against her touch. “Shhh.”

  And oddly enough, it did seem to soothe him. He caught his breath, found his rhythm again, until she slid her hand down and he moved his aside.

  She couldn’t close her hand all the way around his cock, but she tried anyway, testing the weight and feel of him against her palm. But when Tom reached for her hand, she pulled away. “No, sugar.” She said it softly, sweetly, but there was no doubt that the words were denial. “Give me a show.”

  Tom nodded tightly, mouth open, panting. He took himself in his hand again, moving tentatively under her gaze. The sight made every nerve in her body fire, especially when he looked up at her with pleading in his gaze. “Tell me how,” he begged.

  “You like it tight,” Emme said. “Tighter.”

  She was gratified when he obeyed, knuckles clenching. The head of his cock disappeared into his fist, reappeared again as he moved up and down his length.

  “You like that?” she asked, her voice a purr.

  Tom nodded. “I love it.”

  “Good,” Emme said. She could feel her own arousal building again. She slid her fingers over her breasts, flattening her palms over her nipples. They were tight, hard, and the pass of her hands over them made her want to moan. Tom jerked himself harder at the sight, so she leaned forward.

  “Here,” she said, offering her breast to him. “Suck.”

  Tom groaned at the offer, reaching for her with a trembling hand. He took the tip of one breast in his mouth. His tongue was strong and wet and hot, and as he sucked, she felt all her muscles tightening again. She looked down at his face, his eyes closed with pleasure, dark lashes resting against his cheeks. She watched the tendons of his wrists flex and release, the muscles in his forearm bunch as he stroked himself harder.

  God, she wanted, and all the images running through her mind scared her almost as much as they turned her on. He would let her do anything, she realized. Anything.

  Emme pulled away from him, and he made a whimpering protest until she leaned down, hair falling around her face, and bit the edge of his wrist, the one that was so busy working his cock.

  His hips lurched up from the bed in response, and he opened his mouth and started talking. “Oh Jesus, you’re so amazing, please …”

  Emme shushed him, pulling away from his body and his words. He was so far gone, feet flexing, eyes closed, hips pushing up into his hand, and she wasn’t ready for it all to end yet, not on his terms, anyway. She felt completely out of control at the sight of him so abandoned, a little afraid of what he might say if she let him keep talking. So she did the only thing that felt right.

  “Stop.”

  Her tone was harsher than she’d intended it to be, but the command worked. Tom’s hand stopped moving, his eyes snapped open, and he immediately apologized, though she could tell he wasn’t sure what, exactly, he was apologizing for.

  Emme wasn’t sure either, except that she felt like she should be the one apologizing.

  “Do you want me to tell you ‘no’?” she finally asked, smoothing her hand down over his hair. “Or do you want me to let you come?”

  Tom turned his face into her hand. “I don’t know. Both. Yes. No.” He was breathing hard, his chest rising and falling, and Emme leaned forward and brushed a kiss on the tattoo over his heart.

  “If you tell me to stop, I’m going to stop,” she said, tracing her hair over his chest again and again. She couldn’t bear to look at him; those eyes so lost and far away, and she wanted to hurt him and hold him at the same time.

  “Please don’t stop.” He looked at her when he said it, forcefully, and a great wave of relief washed through her. She took her own deep breath, smiled at him, and then made her face serious again. She could do this. She wouldn’t hurt him—more than he wanted.

  Tom nodded, and Emme scooted back on the bed. She leaned back, propping herself up on her elbows, feet planted and knees apart. She slid a hand down her body, over the hill of her belly, down into the dip between her legs. “See how wet I am? It’s from watching you.” She parted her sex, showing him.

  “Oh God, Emme. God.” Tom turned his head, screwed his eyes shut. “If you do that, I’m really going to come. You’re so pretty.”

  Those words made Emme’s breath turn jagged and hard. “Here,” she said, and she slid her fingers inside herself, wetting them, and smeared her wetness on his cock. “You like this. You like it wet. Lick your hands now.” Some heady sense of power rushed through her, bigger than she’d ever felt, even onstage, even when she had an audience eating out of the palm of her hand. Her head was full with it, this sense of invincibility.

  Tom shuddered when she touched him, but he did as she asked, even meeting her eyes as he licked one palm, then the other, tongue dragging up and over his fingertips. She was suddenly awash in sense-memory, hot with the awareness of what that tongue had felt like against her. “Good,” she murmured. Oh, she could take care of him, too, make him feel as good as he’d made her feel. That felt as good, if scarier, than the buzz of adrenaline behind her eyes.

  “Now,” Emme said, “wrap your hand around your cock.” The command, and his unquestioning obedience, tore something loose inside her. God, she hadn’t known how much she wanted this until it was handed to her, and now she had no idea how she had ever lived without it. She needed to be filled, needed to be touched, needed to watch as his shoulders lifted up off the pillow and he tightened his hand around himself.

  “Imagine,” she continued, sliding the fingers of one hand down into her entrance, reaching for a nipple with her other hand, “that you’re pushing into me, into all my heat.”

  “God, Emme.” His voice sounded like it had been pulled from him, but she thought it was in the best way, the most lovely, pleasurable way. “I want that. I want you. I want it so bad.”

  Tom thrust his hips, his hand moving down harder. His cock was slick, dark with arousal, and swollen, and Emme felt that thrust as if he really had shoved into her. She pushed two fingers deep inside herself and pinched her nipple hard.

  “I know you want it,” she said, voice as thick as syrup and twice as sweet. “But you’re going to have to imagine. Imagine me saying, ‘You feel so good inside me. You’re so big I can barely take it.’ ”

  Tom reached for her, one hand landing awkwardly on her calf. “Yes. Say that.”

  “You’re close, aren’t you?” That flash of power again, of control. Of caring. She could make this so good for him, and she wanted to.

  Tom nodded, jaw clenched, features twisted in agony. “God, I’m so close. I’m imagining …”

  “What? Tell me.” Emme was rapidly losing control of her body, her own hips pumping up to meet her fingers, her thumb strumming her clit.

  “You. Onstage.” She could hear the slippery sounds of his hand on himself now, could hear her own sounds as she added a third finger, needing to be filled. “Only you lift your skirt and make me.”

  “Make you what?”

  “Make me fuck you. Up there. In front of everyone. While they all watch.”

  Emme pictured it, the lights of the stage, the audience in front of her, Tom behind her, thrusting into her, his hand playing her clit like he played his bass, and suddenly everything in her world narrowed down to her body, her sex, her own frantic rubbing until it all ballooned outward and she came, and she heard herself saying, “Yes, Tom. I love it.”

  By the time she came back to herself, she saw Tom, unmoving, hand on his cock still, holding his breath. “Please, may I? Please, let me … God, Emme.” Every muscle in his body looked so
tense that she actually worried for his well-being.

  And he was asking her permission to come. That thought alone nearly sent her over the edge again.

  “Yes,” she said. “Do it. Come all over yourself. I want to see it.”

  Tom nodded shortly, then fucked himself up into his hand hard. For one moment, he seemed suspended in anguish, and then his whole body shook as his orgasm overtook him, coating his belly.

  He relaxed in stages; first his feet, then his legs. The muscles in his abdomen twitched and released, and then his hands, arms, shoulders fell away and he lay next to her, limp.

  Adrenaline still soared through Emme’s body; her blood felt like it pumped through her at twice its usual speed. God, she had never felt so powerful or so terrified in her whole life. She glanced over at Tom, who barely looked conscious. What had she done to him? She’d made him crawl on the floor. She’d demanded that he masturbate in front of her. Jesus, she really must be some kind of horrible man-eating whore.

  And despite it all, a sense of tenderness overwhelmed her. She wanted to run her hand through his sweaty hair, smooth it back from his face, whisper praise into his ear for hours, curl her body around his and hold him tight.

  She needed a minute. She needed an hour. She rolled off the bed and padded, barefoot, into the bathroom.

  “Emme?” she heard him calling for her from the bed, sounding lost and very young.

  Something inside her constricted hard. Emme took a look at herself in the sickly yellow light of the bathroom mirror. Her lips were swollen, chin covered in pink beard rash, hair a tangled mess around her shoulders. She looked like she’d had one hell of a good time. She had planned to climb into the shower and stay there until Tom got the hint and left, but his voice calling out to her made her feel a sick sense of shame at the thought.

  Instead, she grabbed a washcloth from the towel rack and ran it under the warm tap.

  When she came back into the bedroom, Tom was lying on his side, knees drawn up to his chest, looking shivery and cold. She switched on the lamp on his side of the bed.

  “Hey,” she said. Her voice came out softer than she’d meant it to. “Roll onto your back.”

  Tom’s shivering stopped at the sound of her voice, and he unwound himself from the tight ball he’d made of his body. “Thought you were gonna leave me,” he slurred, sounding half asleep still.

  Oh, hell. Emme ran the warm cloth over his chest and belly, watching his abdomen tense and relax as she cleaned him. He closed his eyes and made a little happy sound, his hand coming up to find her hip and rest there. Whatever nurturing instinct had taken over her made her think of little boys who had to do their homework in bars and grown men who watched over everyone but themselves, with no one to take care of them when they needed it.

  “You need a drink of water, sugar?” she asked when she was done with the washcloth.

  Tom nodded and scooted up higher on the bed, pulling a pillow over to rest behind his back. “Please. And if you don’t mind …”

  Emme paused at the table, hand suspended while reaching for a glass.

  “Could I just … hold you for a while?”

  The edge of the room went from fuzzy to sharp, so sharp Tom felt like he’d put on glasses for the first time.

  Emme sat on the bed next to him, naked, pink, all hair and curves and brown eyes, and handed him a glass of water. He took the glass from her, hands shaking like he’d drunk an entire pot of truck-stop coffee.

  She watched him as he drank, her hand resting on his side. “Better?”

  Better than he’d ever been in his life. He managed a nod and reached for her, getting an armful of warm softness. She was tense, though; she lay beside him stiffly, not curling her body around him the way he wanted, twirling a finger in his chest hair.

  “Tom …,” she began, and she sounded sad and uncertain.

  “That was amazing,” he interrupted. He didn’t want to hear what she had to say if it started in that tone of voice. “I haven’t felt like that since …”

  She shifted beside him, her breasts brushing against his arm. “Since when?” Her eyebrows drew together in an adorably jealous frown.

  Good. He’d gotten her ire up. But he couldn’t seem to stop his mouth from opening and words from just falling out all over the place. “Since my last tattoo. Jesus.”

  “Oh yeah? So, what, having sex with me is like being repeatedly stabbed with needles?”

  “No. Yeah, kind of.” Tom took another long swallow of water, trying to clear the gravel from his throat. He got an arm underneath her side and dragged her a little closer. Better. How could his head be so foggy and clear at the same time? “The artist who did the piece on my chest. She was cute. And it took an hour, you know, with my shirt off and her basically straddling me, breathing on my skin, and it hurt. And by the time it was over, I had the biggest hard-on I’d had until … well, until I met you. And it felt so fucking good and bad at the same time. I’d never really thought something that hurt could feel so good. Felt like this afterward.”

  Emme made a little displeased sound, kind of a growl, and pulled a little on his chest hair. He liked that, a hint of possessiveness, jealousy. “This feels bad, now?” she asked.

  “No, Jesus, no. I feel like I could, like, lift cars. Or maybe fall through the mattress and die.”

  Emme laughed and rewarded him by burrowing into his side, her head on his shoulder. One of her legs crept up over one of his, smooth and round and warm, and twined with his thigh. “Yeah. I don’t really know what that was. I’ve never … I’ve never done anything like that before.”

  Tom hesitated. “You’re very good at it, though.”

  “You have, I take it?” Emme brushed her hand back and forth over his belly.

  “Yeah. But it felt different. Not this good.” Her hand paused, so he started talking. “There was a woman who taught me some things. Like, the hands behind the back thing. And you seem to like being in charge. Thought you might like it.”

  “I do. I like it a lot.”

  “Good. When do we do it again?”

  He was aiming for another laugh, but instead she pulled away. His side felt cold with the loss of her body against it.

  That regret was back in her voice when she spoke and he hated it. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea.”

  Oh, no no no. That was what he’d been afraid of. He rolled onto his side to face her, brushed her hair back from her cheek where it was sticking. “Emme. Why?”

  “To be honest?” She looked away from him, two red spots appearing high on her cheekbones. Her fingers plucked at the sheets, playing piano scales on an invisible keyboard. “I want to do it again. More than I can say. But I don’t know how we’re going to keep this secret.”

  Tom hadn’t thought about that. He hadn’t thought about much other than the fact that he was the luckiest bastard alive. But of course, with the kind of publicity she’d gotten in the past, she’d care.

  He couldn’t promise that he’d behave himself in public; he wasn’t sure he could now. Surely every time he looked at her, he’d get a raging boner and everyone in the room would notice.

  “Emme.” Her name even felt different in his mouth now. “I don’t think what happens between us needs to be anybody’s business but ours.” That was true enough, even if he wanted everyone to know, just so he could explode with pride.

  Emme flashed him a little hint of a smile, the delicate pink inside of her lips showing. “Well.”

  She ruffled his hair, then pushed it back down into place. “So I guess you should probably … go back to your room now.” She winced. “That sounds so rude, but we leave for Atlanta tomorrow and I don’t want Dave and Guillermo to knock on the door in the morning and …”

  Something inside Tom sank a little at those words. He’d hoped he’d get to hold her all night, maybe wake up in the morning next to her all naked and snuggly and see what else they could do before they had to behave themselves in the van. But whatev
er the sacrifice was to get to have her again at all, he was willing to make it. “Okay,” he said.

  He almost stumbled getting out of the bed. There was still that buzzing feeling pushing through him, the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet tingling, and his clothes were all over the floor. Emme sat on the bed watching, playing chords on the pillow, as he tripped into his underwear and T-shirt. By the time he pulled on his jeans, he couldn’t remember where he’d left his belt. He stood, barefoot, in the doorway, feeling like some vital part of his brain wasn’t firing the way it should.

  Emme rescued and short-circuited him at the same time when she hopped off the bed, naked, and brought him his belt from the floor beside the chair. She slid her fingers across his as she handed the leather back to him, and his dick valiantly attempted to rise back to life.

  She looked away first, though, sunset-pink color spreading over her chest and neck. “Good night, Tom.”

  Chapter Eight

  Atlanta loomed in front of Emme like a lone mountain amid a sea of flat plains. The city rose out of the kudzu-covered landscape, gleaming glass skyscrapers and shimmering urban heat contrasting with the wild green of the surrounding area. The city had always given Emme the impression that, for all its six-lane highways and gold-domed capitol, at any moment the kudzu might make a break for it, overrunning everything that stood in its path.

  Atlanta was a sponsored stop, at least for the first two nights; SoundGap, an indie-music blog and podcast that played on public radio stations, had picked up the tab for part of their time there. Emme had worked hard to get the sponsorship, and it meant special performances, acoustic sets, and exclusive interviews. It meant exhaustion and personal questions. But it also meant a nicer hotel than any they’d stayed in the rest of the tour, and at least a little money she didn’t have to spend.