Emme held on to the marble edge of the sink and breathed deeply and slowly, the way she did when the buzz of excitement before a show crossed the border into sheer anxiety. She imagined her diaphragm stretching open, air filling her belly, her chest, her arms and her legs, then exhaled, picturing the slow, supported release of oxygen on notes that spun out through the atmosphere, sound pushing out against the corners of the room.
When Tom had kissed the spot where the top of her shoe met her foot, her entire body had flooded with heat so sharp it was nearly painful; but when he’d led her into the bathroom and washed and massaged her feet, his brow furrowed with concentration as he knelt on the hard tile floor next to her, she wanted to sob. She didn’t know what she’d done to earn that kind of devotion. She didn’t know how much she’d wanted it, wanted him, that effervescent sweetness and trust that he exuded so strongly that she could taste it coming off his skin.
She loved that about him; he hadn’t had an easy life, and yet he was still so damn tender, ready to melt into her at any affection, ready to care for her at any hint of need. It took its own kind of strength to retain that kindness, that openness, in the face of all his accumulated hurts. For all his guilelessness, he was the strongest man she’d ever met.
She’d asked him for a safe word in a moment of panic at how much she’d wanted from him. Somehow her feelings had gotten so big she had no idea how to contain them; they were pushing at her insides insistently, demanding that she let them fly out all over the room, but some of them had jagged edges.
When she was younger, she’d had a hard time controlling her emotions. Her mother had called her stubborn; her grandmother had called her “willful.” She’d learned, over the years, to channel her feelings into songs, into her voice, to hold them inside and control them when they came out, like her voice when she sang. But now she wasn’t sure she could hold on to her impulses.
She’d just have to rely on Tom to stop her.
Emme flicked off the bathroom light when she went back into the bedroom. The bedside lamp cast as many shadows as it eliminated. Tom had pulled the covers off the bed, stripping it down to the fitted sheet, and he lay atop it on his back in the dimness. He looked disreputable and downright obscene lying there with nothing to cover him, his hands flat on the headboard over his head, his biceps bunched in that position.
He looked like a sacrifice laid out for some pagan goddess, and that thought sent a full-body shudder through her.
Emme climbed onto the bed next to him. Tom’s eyes followed her movements, anticipatory and bright. She bent down over his ear, her lips brushing against him as she whispered. “I’m going to make you hurt and I’m going to make you come.” He shivered at her words, his eyes sliding closed, and she nipped at his earlobe.
He was so beautiful. She pulled back and sat up, running her hand up and down his flank, roughing up the hair on his sides and smoothing it back down. He hummed under her touch, his whole body leaning into her hand.
Emme nuzzled at the line of muscle that ran along his hip, inhaling his scent, rubbing her face against his skin, tracing his dips and valleys with her lips. He twitched at her touch, and she looked up at him, waiting to see if he protested.
“Tickles,” he said on a huff of air.
She smiled against him and kissed her way up his leg. The juxtaposition of his powerful body—muscled, tattooed, hairy—and his submissive position, sprawled on the bed, naked, while she still wore her bra and panties, was so lovely it made something in her ache. She kissed his belly, ran her tongue along the line of hair that led from his navel to his cock, then raised her mouth to his and kissed him for endless minutes, his lips opening under hers and letting her inside, his breath against her face. She found his dimple with her thumb and rested it there in the indentation on his cheek, another example of sweetness and innocence against the masculinity of his two-day beard.
There was so much to love about him. Emme felt raw and exposed like those illustrations in anatomy textbooks where the skin was peeled back to reveal the nerves and muscles beneath. She pulled away from Tom’s mouth, kissed a path over to his ear. “Turn over, sugar,” she commanded softly, pulling his earlobe with her teeth. “Hold on to the headboard.”
Tom hissed in a breath at the pain, or maybe the shock, of her teeth on him, but he did as she asked, all flexing muscle and sinew and rough hair-dusted skin as he turned over on the bed, rising up on his knees, shoulders tight and bunched as he grabbed the headboard.
Emme slid her palms up and down his back, feeling the warmth of his skin under her hands, loving the feel of him, pent-up anxiety and lust hers to control, to own, to worship, too, because he deserved nothing less.
She pulled herself up onto her knees behind him, her hips resting against his ass, her belly and breasts pressed to his back. If she were a man, she could fuck him like this, push into him, make him sweat and grunt and moan. She pressed her lips to the center of his back, scraped his skin with her teeth, and felt him shiver. She gave a little experimental thrust of her hips against his, tapping her pubic bone against his ass, and that slight pressure flooded her sex with heat.
There was something there, something in the tensing of his muscles when she did that, something in the fire in her veins that she wanted to explore, though the thought terrified her more than it aroused her at that moment. Emme let her hand drift around Tom’s side, reveling in the smooth tautness of his skin, before she glanced the back of her hand over his cock, and it was so blazingly hot that it nearly burned.
Emme inhaled at the same moment as Tom, their breaths hissing in together as she touched him. With her body spread over his, her arm wrapped around his middle, she felt connected, like her edges had fuzzed and faded and blended in with his until she wasn’t sure where she stopped and where he started.
“Tell me how it feels, sugar,” she said, suddenly needing to hear his voice, his words. How this felt to him.
His voice was muffled when he spoke. “Good,” he said.
Emme pulled away from him enough to run one hand down his back, fingers curled to score his skin gently with her nails. Not hard enough to even leave a mark, just enough to scratch; just enough that, when she squeezed his cock with her other hand, he gasped. “You can do better than that,” she said.
And then she dug her nails in harder, just as she slid her hand up and then down his cock.
A thrill of power shot straight through her body; Tom jerked under her hand, pre-come dampening the tip of his cock. “It feels amazing,” he breathed. “Harder. Please.”
Emme bit the bottom of her lip at that, trying to hold in a laugh—at his adorable eagerness, maybe, or just the giant bubble of emotion that was growing inside her chest that demanded some sort of release: laughter, tears, or even better …
A hard slap on the meatiest part of Tom’s ass.
His groaned, “Oh, God, Emme,” registered at the same time as the reverberations of the movement up her palm, her arm, through her whole body. He bucked back against her, but his hands didn’t leave the headboard, just as she’d ordered. It was a release of sorts, that smack opening a pressure valve that let out some of the overwhelming emotions swirling in her chest, even as it added to them.
“You don’t get to tell me how hard, sugar,” she said. She ran her hand over the place she’d struck. She hadn’t hit him hard; the shock of the sound had caused his reaction more than the pressure she’d used. “I do what I want, and you tell me how it feels.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and he turned and smiled at her, a quick flash of dimples letting her know that he knew just how devastating she found those words.
His face wasn’t the only place he had dimples. With his back exposed to her, she could see the twin indentations on either side of his vertebrae at the end of his spine. Caving to an impulse she’d had since she first saw them, she fitted her thumbs inside and pressed down hard, pulling him back against her hips as she did.
Her reward was his
long, low groan. “Fuck, Emme,” he said in a voice that had been pulled from somewhere deep in him. He panted, and she watched the skin over his knuckles tighten as he gripped the headboard tighter.
Emme had to struggle for air herself. Everything about him was beautiful, vulnerable, lovely, and it wasn’t enough. She wanted to pull him inside her, climb into him, shed her skin and don his. Frightening feelings, intense feelings, the kind that were never, ever safe.
“Does it hurt?” she asked.
Tom nodded and pressed his ass to her. “Yeah. But it hurts good.”
“You want more?”
“God yes.”
Her hand fell on his ass again, almost of its own accord. This time it landed a little harder, hard enough to raise a little pinkness to his skin. “You brought me your belt.”
“Yes.”
Emme ran her hand along his side, traced his cock with the backs of her fingers. He thrust closer to her hand, a moan escaping his mouth. “What did you imagine I’d do with it, sugar?”
“Whatever you wanted.”
Emme landed another slap, this time on the other side of his ass. “Not good enough.” She knew what she wanted, but she needed him to say it, ask for it, make her desires acceptable instead of scary.
And she wanted him to tell her, trust her enough to say what he was too shy to come right out and ask for.
“You could …” Tom groaned when she stroked his cock, her hand loose and gentle as she did. “God that feels amazing.”
Emme draped herself over his back, pressing a kiss between his shoulder blades, and kept stroking. “Go on.”
Tom cleared his throat. A wash of pink was spreading up his shoulders, along the back of his neck. Emme could see the little hairs on the back of his neck raise with her breath. “You could tie me up with it. My hands. And then use me.”
“Hmm.” Emme pictured him for a moment, bound, erect, at her mercy. A sharp bite of heat ran through her at the thought. He’d be so beautiful that way. But she suspected that wasn’t all he wanted, so she did what she did best.
She pushed.
“I could, but that’s not what you really want, is it?” she whispered, and then she hit him, hard, one hand landing on his ass with enough force to jar her palm at the same time she tightened her grip on his cock with her other hand, jerking.
“Oh, fuck, Emme, please God—” Every muscle in his body tensed beneath her. “I’m going to come, I can’t help it …”
“Help it,” she commanded.
Tom’s breath came jagged and hard. She felt him swallow, watched his hands shift on the headboard. “Beat me,” he said finally, once he’d gotten himself back under control. “Beat me with it. I want you to. I’ve dreamed about it. Thought about it.”
There it was, her desires, spoken aloud and granted permission by him. The edges of the room went liquid in her peripheral vision until Emme remembered to breathe. “Tell me your safe word.”
“Fender.” He didn’t hesitate, even as far gone as he was, aroused and trembling and never, ever moving from the position she’d put him in.
“You’ll say it. If you need to.” It was a command and a question.
Tom turned to face her. He let go of the headboard for a moment—just long enough to cup her face gently in his rough hand. “Trust me. I’ll say it if I need to. Let go.”
Emme thought of him leading her when they danced, how competent his body had felt moving against hers. She kissed him then, letting him hold her jaw. She pulled back and nuzzled into his shoulder before issuing orders again.
“Hold the headboard. Don’t move. And don’t come.”
His dick jerked at that order, and Emme had to smile. She wanted him to hold out; she wanted to be able to take him later. But if he couldn’t that was okay, too. She wanted his pleasure as much as her own, which she could honestly say was something she had never felt before.
Emme scooted down off the bed. Tom’s belt lay folded next to him, and she picked it up, running her fingers over the leather. She’d never done anything like this before; she wasn’t entirely sure how to do this without hurting him. She knew she’d stay away from the buckle end, but other than that, she was at a loss.
Emme folded the belt over, holding the buckle end in her hand. She flicked her wrist and the leather slapped against itself with a satisfying noise. Tom’s whole body twitched at the sound.
There was only one way to find out if the pressure was right. Emme had never been interested in pain herself, but if she was willing to inflict it on Tom, she supposed she needed to know what she was doing. She held out her inner arm and aimed the belt at the tender skin there.
Even with the satisfying crack, the pressure was more of a sting or a slap than real pain. It faded to an amazing sort of burn, one that she wasn’t sure she’d enjoy if Tom weren’t writhing naked on her bed. She waited to make sure nothing worse followed. Her arm turned pink and a tiny stripe formed where she’d struck it; she’d have to make sure not to hit too hard then.
The thought of marking up Tom’s skin, though … she had to bite her bottom lip to keep in a moan.
Emme felt that top-of-the-rollercoaster stomach drop that she seemed to have so often around Tom. She raised her arm and let go.
When the leather slapped against his skin, Tom’s entire body reacted. He hissed in a breath at the same time that his muscles jumped, ropey and tight against his bones. He rocked forward, then back toward Emme but he left his knees on the bed and his hands on the headboard.
A wave of heat slammed through her at the sight. Emme felt like she’d been standing knee-deep in the ocean and suddenly tumbled ass-over-teakettle onto the shore. She struck again, this time on the other side.
It was like playing a new instrument for the first time; the few strokes, tentative and frightening, loaded with the fear of the sound emerging differently than she heard it in her head. But she’d always been a fast learner, and before long the song had changed, taking on a melody and rhythm of its own. She lost herself in it, the steady burn in her shoulder, the sweaty cadence of Tom’s body as the belt fell, and fell, and fell. Wrapped in the moment, the sound of his voice as he spoke, harsh grunts of God and more and please the bass line above the drumbeat of the leather, the rush of her own breath, the sound of her pumping blood, the melody and harmony twining above them.
Even as lost as she was, when she saw the raised pink lines begin to form on Tom’s skin, she stopped. Learning any new instrument required practice, and she hated the thought of souring the song before she knew what she was doing. And besides, she couldn’t bear to keep her hands from him any longer.
She dropped Tom’s belt onto the nightstand. Her shoulder ached. That need to get closer, as close as possible, swept inside her again, and she shimmied out of her bra and underwear. She needed to feel his skin pressed against hers, take in the pattern of lines on his back and ass, absorb his pain and arousal and everything else about him.
“You can let go now,” she said, and her voice shook. So did her knees as she clambered up next to him, running her hand lightly over the stripes she’d made.
It was like she’d let a leopard out of its cage; he turned and grabbed her around the waist, pushing her down onto the bed and kissing her hungrily. She couldn’t mind, though, because she wanted to consume him just as much. Their tongues tangled, teeth knocking together inelegantly. The weight of his body atop hers was sweet, warm and hard and perfect. Emme slid her fingers up through his hair and tugged, pulling his head back, running the edge of her teeth along the side of his neck.
She wanted to bite down, tear his skin. Instead she nipped, then kissed, and pushed Tom over onto his back.
He moaned when his ass hit the sheets, and Emme immediately pulled back. “Too much?” She imagined tender skin, red now, pressed into the hotel bed, and although the thought turned her on, there was a little nub of shame behind it, that she would enjoy something that might actually hurt him.
“No. Good. It
feels like you’re still hurting me.” Tom squirmed against the bed as he reached for her. “I didn’t want you to stop.”
Emme hadn’t really wanted to stop, either, but until she knew more about what she was doing, she didn’t want to risk harming him. “We’ll learn,” she promised, and the possibility those words conjured up—nights together, days together, enough time to make mistakes and figure things out and learn each other’s bodies—filled her with sweetness. It pressed against her until she had no choice, really, but to drape herself over Tom and kiss him while her hands shook and he wrapped his arms around her.
He said her name each time she pulled away for breath, a prayer, a mantra.
The sweetness grew claws, sharpened her desire. Tom’s erection pressed into her belly, hot and live, his hands roving over her back. His brows were drawn down, but his eyes were open, blue and sharp and watching her with wonder. Emme ground her sex slowly against his taut abdomen, tormenting him and torturing herself. Tom gasped and reached for her shoulders; from the tightly leashed tension in his muscles, she could tell that he was trying not to pull her against him, push her onto him. That kind of restraint took strength; the more she discovered about him, the more strength she found.
This strong man with his tight muscles and tattoos, his disreputable scruff, was willing to hold himself back and follow her commands. He could overpower her if he wanted; he could take her against her will, he could use her and then scorn her and call her a whore, but he wouldn’t. He let her lead, let her have his trust, let her have the control she needed so desperately.
She wanted him inside her in every way she could have him.
Emme scooted to the edge of the bed and yanked open the nightstand drawer. The box of condoms she’d bought in Tuscaloosa was still wrapped in plastic, and it confounded her lust-clumsy fingers.
Tom reached over her and took the box, ripping it open and sending foil packets flying in every direction. She laughed then at the ridiculousness of it all, the intensity of her feelings juxtaposed with the inability to act on them, at Tom’s adorably befuddled look as he scrambled to grab one of the condoms, at how silly the whole idea was, of being naked and panting and yearning together, and just how unselfconscious she felt, even knowing all of that.
Have Mercy: A Loveswept Contemporary Erotic Romance Page 14
