Have Mercy: A Loveswept Contemporary Erotic Romance (16 page)

Emme wound her way through the crowd. She stopped to greet a couple of fans, chatted for a while with an aspiring singer, and fended off the advances of three different guys wearing far too much cheap cologne.

Somehow, without consciously planning to, she found herself sliding into a booth next to Tom, who was nursing a club soda with lime and talking to a very pretty and very young brunette.

“No, I can’t say that I’m familiar with his work,” Tom was saying. “But I’ll give it a listen. Thanks for the recommendation.”

“No problem!” The brunette was all smiles and hair flipping, and Emme fought the urge to bare her teeth.

Jesus, woman, next you’re going to pee on him. Get a grip
.

Emme was saved from herself by a tap on her shoulder.

Jed stood next to her, holding a martini. “The guys told me this was your usual,” he said as he
handed it to her.

“Thanks, but you really didn’t need to do that,” Emme said. She smiled when she looked at the garnish.

Just one olive.

She risked a glance at Tom, caught him looking at her drink. She lifted the toothpick, just enough for him to see.

“Stingy with the olives here,” he noted. She could see the little muscles in his face trying to hold back a grin.

The feeling of sharing a joke, just the two of them, melted through her. Nothing felt quite as good as the rush after a great show, and she was still abuzz with that sensation, and the combination of comfort and exhilaration pushed her high.

The sound of Jed’s voice brought her back down to earth. “So, Emme.” He cleared his throat. “Are you … seeing anyone?”

How dare you
, she wanted to say.
You called me mentally unstable in your last podcast
. Next to her, she felt Tom’s whole body stiffen, his knuckles turn white where he gripped his club soda. Emme felt her way through the conversational minefield.

“You know I like to keep my personal life private,” she demurred, and took a sip of her martini.

She watched as a blush crept out from under Jed’s beard. “Off the record,” he said.

Emme could feel Tom hold his breath next to her. Oh, this felt bad. If Jed hadn’t been watching her so closely, she would have given his knee a squeeze under the table, maybe nudged him with her leg to let him know she didn’t mean it, but she didn’t dare. “I was taught a lady is more appealing if she’s allowed to maintain a little mystery,” she said. “But thank you for the drink.”

To his credit, Jed seemed to know a dismissal when he heard one. Emme felt Tom relax when he took his leave; she wished she could relax, too, but awareness of all the eyes in the room, all the bloggers and critics and people with cell phones made her antsy.

Dave and Guillermo were still riding the adrenaline from a successful show. Emme hadn’t seen Dave look so happy in months. The two of them joined Emme and Tom, matching grins on both their faces.

“Hey, guys!” Guillermo flopped down in the booth next to Emme. “We are so fucking awesome.”

“We totally are.” Dave nodded. He raised his beer to Tom’s club soda. “You included, man. I
was wrong about you.”

“Oh yeah? How so?” Tom leaned against the table, looking more curious than upset at the statement. Emme realized that he was probably used to assumptions.

“He wanted a different bass player for this tour,” Guillermo said. “But Emme and I overruled him.”

“Fair enough.”

“I thought you’d bring a bunch of drama with you, to be honest,” Dave said. “But so far, so good, right?”

Emme interrupted before Dave could get any more honest. “We’ve all grown a lot in a very short time period,” she said. “Can you believe the crowds we’ve been seeing? The press coverage we’re getting? Even if it’s so they can all gawk at my personal life.”

“Whatever,” Guillermo shrugged. “If it brings them in, it brings them in. They download the album, so it must be more than that. It’s because we rule.”

“Hey, Tom.” Dave pushed back from the table. “Mo and I wanted to know if you wanted to play a game with us.”

“We did?” Guillermo looked lost.

“Yeah, we did. The game.”

Emme felt her eyes narrow. Dave and Guillermo had a habit of challenging each other to sleep with women in bars. They called it The Game, as if it were like charades or something, and usually it devolved into them either getting rejected or talking themselves out of approaching any woman in the bar while getting progressively drunker and more self-pitying.

Tom had the good sense to look wary. “What kind of game?”

“The saddest game in the world,” Emme muttered.

“The best game in the world!” Guillermo countered.

“It’s not really a game,” Emme said. She took a sip of her martini. “These two each pick a woman out of the bar that they think the other would like, then dare the other to make a move.”

Tom frowned. “Does that even work?”

“No,” Emme said.

“It worked in Birmingham!” Dave grinned and took a long swallow of his beer.

Guillermo nodded. “Yeah, it’s true. He put the Do Not Disturb sign on the door. I had to sleep in the lobby that night.” He and Dave high-fived each other.

“Okay, so it worked
once
.” Emme twirled the toothpick from her martini between her fingers. “And it’s not homoerotic
at all
to have two dudes choosing each other’s future sexual partners.”

Guillermo laughed at that. “You found us out,” he said. “We’re just fucking by proxy.”

“Seems like it would be less work if you just fucked each other,” Emme continued.

“But we can’t,” Dave said. He pulled a face. “Fleetwood Mac.”

“You can’t fuck each other because of Fleetwood Mac?” Tom sounded confused.

Guillermo nodded sagely. “The sacred rule of all music groups. No in-group fucking. It ruins everything, just like with Fleetwood Mac.”

“Amen,” Dave said, and he raised his bottle. He and Guillermo clinked beer bottles in a mock toast.

Emme twirled the toothpick a little faster and tried not to meet their eyes.

“Guys? Fleetwood Mac didn’t break up,” Tom said. He leaned forward, elbows planted on the table. “They just reshuffled. And
Rumors
was their best album. So fucking bandmates didn’t ruin Fleetwood Mac. I’d say it
made
Fleetwood Mac.”

Careful
, Emme thought.

“Huh.” Guillermo took another swallow of his beer.

“Okay, I’ll grant you that.” Dave nodded in Tom’s direction. “I mean, nobody wants all that drama, but all right.” He thought for a moment. “What about No Doubt?”

Emme knew she was headed into dangerous territory, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. She’d always had a hard time disengaging from Dave when she thought he was wrong. “Nope,” she said. “They played together for years after Gwen Stefani and whatshisname broke up.”

“The White Stripes,” Dave countered, but Guillermo was already shaking his head.

“They were already divorced by the time they made it big.”

“The Beatles?” Guillermo tried.

Emme sighed. She’d never thought she could relate to Yoko Ono, but the past three years had taught her something about rumors and sex and music. “Yoko wasn’t a Beatle. You could say the Beatles broke up over a woman but not because band members had a relationship.” She took a long swallow of her martini.

“And even that’s not really fair,” Tom added. “I mean, Yoko was the excuse. The easy way out, instead of admitting that it was really all about conflicts of ego.”

“Fair enough, man.” Dave raised his bottle and tapped it against Tom’s glass of club soda.
Emme noticed that he looked tired, his eyes dark-circled, and he rubbed his temples when he set the bottle down.

“Look, guys. I’m going to be honest with you.” Dave picked at the edge of the label on his beer bottle. “Tom, you’re a cool guy.”

“Thanks.”

“But, Emily—Emme—Guillermo and I have given up a lot for you.”

Emme felt the back of her throat tighten in response. An unwelcome surge of guilt shot through her.

“I know. And I appreciate it,” Tom said.

“I’m not asking for gratitude. I can’t speak for Mo, but I’ve done it because I believe in your music. And I like playing with you. And …” He cleared his throat, took another drink. “You’re like family. Even when you do things I don’t like.”

A hot stinging took up residence in Emme’s sinuses. She took a sip of her martini, hoping the burn of gin would replace the lump in her throat. It didn’t.

Dave blew out a breath. “Hell. Just, I want to trust you, but it’s hard. And Tom, I’m sorry if I’ve been kind of …”

“Weird? Douchebaggy?” Guillermo suggested.

“Yeah.” Dave looked so miserable that Emme reached out and put her hand over his, stilling his fidgeting. When he looked back up at her, his eyes were bright. “Just, you’ve been through a lot. After you left Indelible Lines, and then your grandmother died, it was rough. To see you like that. And I don’t want to see you hurt again. I know I ought to mind my own business, but I can’t just let you throw yourself in front of traffic while I watch.”

“I get that.” Emme squeezed his hand. “But you’ve got to trust me to know my own mind, and to be strong enough to deal with whatever I put myself in the path of.”

“Just—be careful, all right?”

Careful
was the last thing Emme wanted to be when it came to Tom. Abandoned, wild, reckless—those all sounded much better. But when Dave reached over and mussed her hair—God, she’d missed him, missed his friendship—she mussed his right back.

Guillermo shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “If we’re gonna keep talking about feelings, I need another drink.”

“Hey, I’ll come with you.” Dave let go of Emme’s hand with one last squeeze. “Don’t do
anything I wouldn’t do,” he added with a grin as he and Guillermo headed for the bar.

Emme swallowed past the clog of tears in her throat. He’d called her by her name again, not Emily, like he’d done since Indelible Lines broke up. Every time he’d called her that, she’d felt like a kid in trouble, unworthy and ashamed. Having his trust back, even just a sliver of it, felt precious and terrifying.

“Hey.” Tom pulled her chin up with one finger. “You okay?”

Heat flooded Emme at the touch of his finger on her chin. God, Dave shouldn’t trust her. Not at all. “It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours and I want you again. Now.”

And she did, with an intensity that scared her. It had started that morning when he’d handed her coffee; then in the studio when she’d remembered how he looked handing her his belt; and as she’d watched him onstage tonight, the thrust of his hips in rhythm behind his bass, wrists and forearms working in a pattern that reminded her of the night before. He could make her feel better, make this uncomfortable squirmy feeling in her go away, replaced by heat and lust and power. Even as she watched out of the corner of her eye to see if anyone noticed them, she felt the pulsing emptiness of her sex and wanted him.

Tom’s hand landed on her knee under the table, squeezing gently. She knew he meant the touch to be comforting, but it set her nerves on fire and she couldn’t stop the little gasp that escaped her.

“Then have me.” It took a minute for Tom’s whisper to register over the rush of blood in her ears.

She reached for Tom’s hand under the table, slid it a little higher up her leg, up to where the lace edge of her stocking met the top of her thigh. She was rewarded by the flush that spread over his cheekbones and his swift intake of breath.

The party around them was growing wilder as the night grew later, fueled by alcohol and excitement. The bar was more crowded than it had been at the beginning of the evening, but in the high-backed, red-velvet upholstered booth, shaded by the darkness of the room, Emme felt like she was locked in her own private haven.

“Come a little closer,” she whispered, and white noise filled her head when Tom obeyed, scooting nearer her body, his breath brushing against her ear.

She scanned the room again. A couple made out in the corner, frantic and sloppy; the group of bloggers had decamped for a cheaper bar. “Lick my neck.”

Tom groaned and she felt the tension in his body as he leaned toward her. His lips were soft
when he brushed them against the side of her neck, his tongue tracing a path up behind her ear, shivery goose bumps following in his wake and heat flooding her body with the knowledge that he would obey whatever orders she gave him.

Her sigh made the flame of the candle on their table flicker. Tom hummed a moan against her ear before he pulled back, his eyes soft and dreamy. It was so easy to make him happy, to get him lost in his own desire.

“Slide your fingers up my leg,” she said, and she shifted in the booth so that her legs were spread wider. Her thigh pressed hard against his, feeling the warm denim through the silk of her stocking.

As Tom traced a path up the inside of her thigh, he watched her face intently. She could tell, from his concentration, that nothing else existed in the world but her in that moment. God, it was a heady feeling. She closed her eyes against it, and when she opened them again, a waitress was standing next to their table.

“Emme? Can I get you another martini?”

Tom’s hand stilled. She could feel panic vibrating through his body, as close as he was to her. Emme smiled at the waitress. Oh, she could have fun with this. She reached under the table and brushed her hand over Tom’s erection, then pulled his fingers closer to the place where her thighs met.

“I’d love another,” she said. “And Tom? What are you having?”

She slid down in her seat and opened her legs, and moved his finger inside the edge of her underwear into her wetness. She heard his breath catch, the husky quality to his voice as he replied. “Club soda with lime.” The words came out slightly garbled and she wanted to laugh, but then his fingers slid over her clit and the impulse died, replaced by another, more urgent.

“Good,” she breathed. She saw that haze fall over Tom’s eyes again at her praise. How far could she push him? Here, where anyone could see?

The waitress left and Tom spoke.

“Jesus.” He swallowed. “You’re so wet.”

From the way he was shifting in his seat and what she’d felt when she glanced her hand over his erection, he had to be rock-hard, too. “I am,” she said. “For you. Are you hard?”