Have Mercy: A Loveswept Contemporary Erotic Romance (18 page)

Emme uncrossed her legs, her toes flexing beneath his chin. Tom reached for her other foot, pressed a kiss to the line where her shoe met the tiny bones in the top of her foot, and drew it off and away. The leather shushed against her stockings as he did, and she sighed from above him. He nuzzled the bones of her ankle, so delicate and knobby, so much smaller than his hand.

Tom followed the line of the seam of her stocking, tracing it with his tongue. He licked over her calf muscle, which flexed under his mouth as she tensed her foot; paused and nibbled at the hollow behind her knee, where she rewarded his efforts with a tiny noise from the back of her throat; and bit at the inside of her thigh before licking away the sting. Kneeling in front of her felt so
right
. The knowledge that he could make her feel good, give her pleasure, swelled inside his chest until he thought he would burst from it.

He reached up her thighs to the place where her garters attached to the top of her stockings. Her skin was so soft and warm under his fingers, her scent growing stronger with her arousal. There were a few things in his life he was proud of, but he couldn’t think of any that topped making this woman happy. He unhooked her stocking from the garter belt and rolled it down her leg, following the path back down with his mouth, kissing and tasting. His stubble tugged at the silk as he pulled it down.

By the time he’d repeated the process with the second stocking, Emme was panting and his cock felt like it might just push itself free of his jeans. The words she said were the sweetest he’d ever fucking heard:

“God, Tom. You’re so good.”

He tried to swallow his heart back down into his chest where it belonged instead of somewhere in the back of his throat where it lodged itself. “Your feet hurt,” he said, inanely.

“What?”

Jesus, he sounded like a complete tool. “Your feet. Those shoes. They’ve gotta hurt.”

Emme wiggled her foot, making a circle with her ankle. She flexed her toes. “Yeah. They do.” She sounded surprised by the realization. “How’d you know?”

Because you’re the center of my world now. Because I watch you all the time. Because I want to
take away everything that hurts you and give you everything that feels good
. Tom shrugged. “They don’t look very comfortable.” He stood, muscles creaking after kneeling so long. “C’mere. Wouldn’t it feel nice to soak them for a while?” He held out his hand to her and she took it, her fingers cool and small in his.

Emme was strangely quiet as she followed him into the bathroom, where he’d run the water warm and soapy. He grabbed a towel off the rack and folded it into a cushion for her on the edge of the tub, then tossed another one on the floor for himself. “Here,” he said as he helped her step over the side. “Sit here. Put your feet in.”

The water had been hot when he ran it; now it was just on the other side of warm. The bubbles were still foamy, floating on the surface, smelling of her shower gel. Tom knelt beside her on his towel, wetting his hands in the bathwater. The position, his hands in the water, made him think of bedtime prayers. Church services.

He lifted her foot and massaged, starting at the base of her heel, thumbs pressing in firmly as he rubbed the soap over her instep. The bones of her foot felt delicate under his hands, the skin softer than it should be, easier to tear. He lost himself in the slippery slide of soap over wet skin, massaging muscles and gentling his touch around the knobby bones. She let out a moan above him and he looked up to see her eyes closed, brow furrowed with pleasure-pain.

Tom had grown up hearing about foot-washing Baptists, his dad’s term for anyone who supported the blue laws that kept bars closed on Sundays. In his father’s mouth those words had meant a religious zealot, someone who thought fun should be a sin. He’d heard, though he had no idea if it was true, that the term came from a religious group that literally washed each other’s feet as a sign of devotion. He’d only ever known the term to be said with derision.

Kneeling on the towel in the light of a hotel bathroom, his arms wet up to his elbows, Emme’s foot cradled in his hand, Tom felt something akin to grace. Foot-washing was a symbol of service to others, wasn’t it? Something personal, intimate, a kind of submission to another that filled him with light and heat.

Although he doubted the foot-washers had rampant hard-ons when they did it.

“Feel good?” he asked, just for the excuse to check on her, talk to her, hear her speak.

“Mmm. Keep going,” she said, her voice husky and raw.

“Yes, ma’am,” he told her because he knew she liked it, and because he liked it, too, that little badge of respect he could give her that no one else did. That she deserved.

He switched to her other foot, giving it the same attention, awash himself in sensation. In the small, quiet room, the sound of water trickling, the warmth of the steam around him, he floated, wrapped in a gauze net of desire and longing.

He rinsed the soap from her feet, water sluicing down over her ankles, running off her toes, splashing all over his jeans as he did. His knees were beginning to ache from contact with the tile floor, even through the towel. The water running off of her body and onto his was a baptism, washing him in the river of Emme, drowning him in her scent and essence.

He turned her around on the edge of the tub and pulled her feet onto the towel, where he dried them carefully, running the towel between each of her toes, around her ankles, up the backs of her calves. When he looked back up at her face, her eyes were soft, bright, lips parted.

He wanted to drink from her skin. He was reborn with a new purpose—to please her any way he could. He’d made her happy; he’d made her moan. He could praise her with sex, but it wasn’t the only thing he could give her, and pride expanded his chest at that thought.

She reached for him, pulled him close to her, curling her fingers in his hair, petting, scratching. Her touch shimmered through his body, comforting and arousing at once. Her mouth was gentle on his at first, her lips tender and sweet, but as she pulled him closer and his wet jeans made contact with the soft skin of her belly, she kissed him harder, forcing his mouth open to take her tongue, walking him backward until his ass hit the edge of the sink.

When she pulled away, they were both breathing heavily. Tom’s chest heaved with effort, pushing his skin against her breasts with each breath.

“We need a word,” Emme said. She rubbed her cheek against the fur on his chest, her skin soft against his crisp hair.

Tom’s brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders. “You want to talk?”

“No.” She bit at his side, just below his armpit, and he hissed at the tickling pain. “We need a word for you. For when you need me to stop.”

“A safe word?” He’d always associated that sort of thing with latex suits, weird-looking equipment, and dudes who wore eyeliner.

Emme shuddered against him. “You have no idea what I want to do to you,” she whispered. “I need to know you can tell me if it’s too much.”

He thought about how she always asked him if he wanted her to stop, how almost frightened she’d looked earlier in the bar when she’d asked him, twice. He trusted her absolutely, but it looked
like maybe Emme didn’t completely trust herself.

“Fender,” he said, finally, the first word that came to mind that he couldn’t imagine himself saying during sex.

Emme grinned. “Like the amp or like the car part?”

“Like the amp.”

She reached up and pulled his head down to hers, her small hand exerting just enough pressure on the back of his neck for him to know what she wanted. He leaned over, eyes drifting closed as he waited for her kiss.

She surprised him, of course. She always did. She spoke, her mouth moving against his, lips brushing, pulling away, touching again as he breathed in her breath. “Take off your clothes. Lie facedown on the bed. Leave your belt next to you.”

His dick practically jumped at the order. He wanted to hug her, pull her close, feel her whole body against his, but she stepped away, looking fierce and warlike and untouchable, so he left the bathroom and did as she asked.

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.