Free Have Mercy: A Loveswept Contemporary Erotic Romance by Shelley Ann Clark

to regain some of her control. To his everlasting credit, Dave took one look at her as she leapt out of the van and said, “We’ve got the sound check. Go change.”
    Emme took a deep breath. She hoped he could see the appreciation in her eyes when she thanked him.
    But she
really
hoped he didn’t see when she leaned in close to Tom as she pulled her bag out of the van and whispered, “Meet me in the green room,” so low it was almost like she only brushed her lips against his ear. She could almost tell herself she hadn’t made a sound, that his eyes hadn’t flashed up to meet hers before he turned away so fast she must have imagined it.
    The club where they were playing, like most of the bars they played in, fell somewhere between slightly seedy and downright dirty. The bar manager led her to the green room, which was neither green nor a room, but instead was a basement niche carved out from the space underneath the stage. The space was dark and low-ceilinged, the concrete floor cracked and sloped and gathering puddles of indeterminate liquid. Somewhere a pipe was leaking, the steady dripping rasping like sandpaper against her already raw nerves.
    The only light in the room came from a naked bulb hanging so low from the ceiling that Emme nearly walked into it. A giant mirror hung along one wall, smudged with God only knew how many years’ worth of dust and fingerprints.
    Emme picked her way across the floor and set her dress and makeup bag down on the rickety folding table in front of the mirror.
    She took a deep breath and a good look at herself in the mirror. Her hair had dried into fuzzy waves, her T-shirt was still slightly damp, and there was mud caked on the hem of her jeans and her Converse sneakers. She looked like an Emily. She felt like an Emily.
    Then she heard the shuffle of a shoe sole against the stairs, a soft, deep voice saying, “Emme?”
    This is my phone booth
. Emme looked into the mirror. Behind her, Tom stood in the doorway to the green room, looking a little nervous, a little uncertain, one foot still on the bottom step, as if she might turn around and tell him to leave.
    Emme met his eyes in the mirror and waited.
    Tom took another step into the room. “I told Dave and Guillermo that I needed a smoke.”
    “So smoke.”
    Emme watched through the mirror as he pulled a cigarette and lighter out of his pocket. He’d changed shirts and rolled up his sleeves to reveal his forearms. That tattoo. Her panicked heartbeat slowed back down to a measured pace, but it was beating in her clit.
    Tom cupped the flame and raised it to his cigarette, took a long, slow inhale, meeting her eyes.
    “Tonight you can look, but not touch,” she said, and felt a wash of calm run through her even as her nipples tightened at the thought.
    Tom nodded and exhaled, not moving an inch from his spot just inside the room’s entrance. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, and Emme liked the thought of him being nervous.
    The light from the single bulb cast shadows over the planes of his face as she watched him in the mirror, the glow from the tip of his cigarette an orange spark against the darkness of the room. He looked disreputable in that dank basement room, the kind of man it might be dangerous to be around.
    Just how well do I really know him?
That thought sent a jolt of arousal straight through her. Well enough to know that he wouldn’t move from that spot unless she told him to, but she could pretend. She could imagine that the reason she made him stay there was because she was afraid of what he might do to her, not because she knew she couldn’t trust herself if he got anywhere near her reach.
    Emme wasn’t sure if she wanted to reward him for the sight of his naked chest in the van earlier or if she wanted to punish him for tempting her with what she knew she shouldn’t want. What she did know, with certainty, was that every minute he stood watching her she felt stronger, sexier.
    Emme reached for the