The Power of Mercy

by Fiona Zedde

  Xóchitl took a small step back, and it seemed a steadying movement rather than a retreat.

  “What can I do for you?” Mai asked when the woman didn’t seem inclined to get to the point.

  “I…” Long hands slid into the pockets of her slacks, and the gaze Xóchitl turned on Mai became blatantly confrontational. “I want to apologize.”

  “For what?” She refused to believe the woman thought any differently of her than she had a few days before.

  “I jumped to conclusions about you and that student…Beatrice. And about a few other things too. I was wrong.”

  Mai frowned. “And how did you reach this great clarity?”

  “You can’t take an apology, can you?”

  “I can take an apology just fine. It’s tricks and bullshit that I don’t accept so easily.”

  “No tricks. No bullshit.” Xóchitl Bentley held up her hands in a pose of surrender. “Beatrice wasn’t very sweet to me after you left the other night. She defended you like you were her child…or her mother.”

  Mai raised an eyebrow. “And that didn’t make you believe your assumptions even more?”

  “Strangely enough, no.” She dipped her head then, looking a bit embarrassed. “That might have something to do with the gentleman sitting next to me who just about asked me if I was insane for saying those things to you. In his mind, you’re apparently one of the few teachers on campus who doesn’t prey on students.”

  “Okay.” Because what else could Mai say in response to that? She knew how she conducted herself at the university. She damn sure didn’t need anyone who wasn’t her boss to validate her behavior.

  “Okay, then.”

  Then that seemed to be it, because Xóchitl Bentley said nothing else. For long seconds, she looked content to simply gaze in Mai’s face, a slight smile on her lips.

  Mai stared back in bemusement, reluctantly appreciating all over again the symmetry of the woman’s face, the curve of her mouth, the slow and measured breathing that barely disturbed the white silk over her breasts. Mai tucked the tip of her tongue into the corner of her mouth as she dropped her gaze to, then away from, the insides of Xóchitl’s elbows, beguiling indents of flesh just under the thin fabric of her blouse. They were places that seemed made for Mai’s fingers, for the curious brush of her mouth.

  Mai cleared her throat and took a step back. “Well, that was nice.” She gripped the handle of her briefcase. “Thanks for that…whatever it was. I’ll see you around.” She turned to go, but Xóchitl grabbed her arm again. Mai froze.

  The fingers on her arm tightened briefly before letting go. “Can I see you this evening after class?” Xóchitl asked.

  “Why?”

  “To buy you a drink. I don’t think my verbal apology convinced you enough.”

  “I don’t need convincing.”

  “But maybe I do.”

  Mai dropped her eyes down the woman’s body again, trying to sense more than see what she was about. The odd cloth bag she’d carried with her every time Mai had seen her was held loosely in front of her in both hands. She looked like a fashion model stuck holding her hippie sister’s book bag.

  The attraction she felt for the woman, along with the anger from their last—and only—conversation, stirred an unfamiliar and unwelcome bittersweet at the back of Mai’s throat. She wasn’t used to feeling this way. And certainly not about a human. The unpleasant cocktail raised her hackles and made her want to lash out. But this wasn’t the place. Her job was sacred to her in a way that few understood; sometimes even she didn’t understand it but only knew that it took the place of family in her life, was comforting in a way that nothing else was—not even the restful glass box in the sky she called her apartment.

  “Okay,” Mai finally responded, surprising herself. “One drink.”

  After Xóchitl finally allowed her to leave, she went on to her office, then to classes, now doubly distracted.

  In the name of starting fresh, they’d agreed to meet at a bar far enough from campus and closer to Mai’s condo. She had time to drop off her briefcase and nearly chicken out of the meeting (not date) while standing in her living room with a hand on the doorknob. But in the end, she went.

  The sound of Rihanna’s “Desperado” greeted her as she walked into the crowded restaurant and bar, warm with its human smells, competing perfumes, and artisanal alcohol extracted from random roots and berries. This was more the type of place her brother would like, written up in the local papers and boasting a dozen types of mayonnaise.

  To distance herself from the strange idea that it might be a date, Mai kept on her “professor clothes,” minus the blazer she usually wore to protect herself against the school’s arctic air-conditioning. She’d barely made it inside the door, smelling the air and wondering what the hell she was doing so far outside her comfort zone, when Xóchitl emerged from the bar. And emerged was the only way to put it when she seemed to part the crowd of standing patrons with her slender frame, a hand lifted to wave Mai her way. It was 9:30 p.m. on the dot.

  “Thank you for coming. I was worried you wouldn’t make it.”

  Mai shrugged. She wasn’t responsible for the woman’s worries. “Are we sitting inside or out?”

  “Outside, if you don’t mind. I love the weather this time of year.” She shocked Mai by taking her hand, warm and strong, and pulling her through the crowd.

  Outside, their table was set for two and settled on a terrace overlooking a Japanese-style garden, complete with a minimalist water fountain trickling tranquility into the night air. The terrace was only big enough for three tables with two chairs each, so with the doors closed, it was quieter out there. Intimate.

  The other tables were occupied, but the couples were deeply involved in their own quiet conversations. Their voices barely raised above a whisper.

  They sat down.

  “I took the liberty of ordering for you,” Xóchitl said. “I remembered you were drinking a white wine the other day.”

  As she finished speaking, a waitress arrived with a tray bearing a bowl of sliced strawberries, a bottle of wine, and two glasses. She greeted Mai with a smile and her soft voice, settling the wine on the table and pouring a small measure of it for Xóchitl to taste and approve. Mai watched the performance with a jaundiced look. It was something she’d seen her mother do a hundred times at most meals—whether business or personal—her presence so powerful that servers invariably gave her the wine to taste and approve without considering anyone else at the table. Mai didn’t mind. Power wasn’t something she was invested in.

  After the wine performance was over, she sat back with her poured but untouched glass of white wine to watch Xóchitl.

  “Thank you for coming.”

  “You said that already,” Mai said.

  “It bears mentioning again, doesn’t it?”

  Mai shrugged. And was a little surprised when Xóchitl’s eyes blatantly followed the movement of her breasts beneath the starched buttoned-up shirt.

  As if reading her mind—or likely her uncharacteristically open expression—Xóchitl said, “You’re very beautiful. No wonder more than half your students are in love with you.”

  “And that made you assume I’m sleeping with them?” To stop herself from fidgeting, Mai settled her fingers around the stem of her wineglass.

  “They’re so very tempting, aren’t they?” Xóchitl bit into a strawberry and slowly chewed.

  “They’re children. Like you said, if I wanted someone to fuck, I’d choose a woman who could properly say no to me without worrying I’d tank her grade.”

  Xóchitl winced. “I’m really sorry about that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s the right thing to be in a situation like this. And because I was wrong.”

  But it didn’t feel that simple. There was something else at play h
ere. Whatever it was, Xóchitl didn’t seem in a hurry to let her know. Mai could play along, though. She’d had enough experience doing that with her family. Playing possum.

  “Okay.” She picked up her glass and waved the faintly fruity wine under her nose. “Tell me, what are we drinking?”

  Xóchitl’s face brightened with a sudden smile, an alarming thing to see on someone usually so cold, at least in Mai’s limited experience. She hid her unease by sipping her wine and nodding to feign interest when Xóchitl rattled off the wine’s country of birth and reasons to pay more than ten dollars for it.

  “Sounds nice enough.” She looked around the terrace and through the glass doors into the rest of the restaurant. The hipster crowd was mostly in its twenties and thirties. No one she recognized. If Xóchitl had invited her to this place to keep her off-balance, it wasn’t quite working. One set of humans at a drinking hole was very much like another, whether they were in her neighborhood, by the university, or in a BDSM club.

  Xóchitl’s hand reached across the table to grip hers, and she flinched from its warmth, so much like her own. The touch felt too comfortable. “Don’t drift away,” she said to Mai, her eyes cool and hot at once.

  Mai shook her head and tried not to squirm from Xóchitl’s touch. “You’re here to apologize to me, not make demands, remember?” She had been mentally drifting away from this woman she had the most unfortunate attraction to. It was self-preservation more than anything else. Although if she’d truly wanted to save herself, she wouldn’t have agreed to this ridiculous so-called apology in the first place.

  Unable to take it anymore, Mai pulled her hand back. “This wasn’t a good idea.” She pushed back from the table. “Consider yourself forgiven. I’ll see you at school.”

  Xóchitl leapt to her feet and blocked Mai’s way out. “Please. Stay.”

  “Why?”

  She didn’t see the kiss coming. And if she had seen it, Mai wasn’t sure she would’ve done anything to avoid it. The press of Xóchitl’s mouth against hers was a quick, warm suction that stole all the breath from Mai’s lungs. She backed away, but Xóchitl followed with the soft temptation of her mouth. Where the restaurant had been a vague hum around her before, it suddenly became a roar of voices, a wave of sound rising over her, overwhelming.

  Then everything was silent, all sound gone. And she simply felt.

  The hammering of her heart. Xóchitl’s hot mouth. The rush of superheated blood under her cheeks. Her hands tingled with the desire to touch. Then it was more than a desire, and she was touching Xóchitl, gripping her waist and parting her lips to accept and double the kiss, greedily licking the taste of crisp wine and strawberries from Xóchitl’s mouth.

  Then Xóchitl pulled away, and it was Mai’s turn to follow and keep the connection between their bodies.

  “We should…” Xóchitl’s voice was low and rough, her breath hot against Mai’s cheek. “We should probably take this someplace more private.”

  With the sound of her voice came other sounds: tittering laughter from one of the tables nearby, voices, people whispering about them. Then came the awareness that she’d been practically feeling up Xóchitl on the terrace. Mai liked sex as much as anyone else, but she didn’t like it in public, and she definitely didn’t like when the feelings associated with it—overheated desperation, panties damp with lust, her breath shallowing like she was fighting for air—snuck up on her and left her just shy of a panic attack.

  Shit.

  “I should go,” she said. “Alone.”

  If she stayed any longer in Xóchitl’s presence, her slight loss of control would become total, her humiliation complete. She walked as quickly out of the restaurant as she could without actually running. Her hand was in her pocket and on her keys when she heard Xóchitl behind her, felt the urgency of her pursuit. Mai unlocked the car door, but before she could slide inside, warm hands grasped her waist and spun her around as if there was no resistance in her at all. She had been resisting, right?

  “Don’t go.”

  Xóchitl was telling her something else. Her body sensed it in the delicate tremors flooding through her at the woman’s very presence. This entire encounter felt off somehow. Had she done something? Changed herself in some way she hadn’t realized? She tried desperately to remember. But she couldn’t.

  “I don’t do this,” Mai said. She was pathetically grateful for the steadiness of her voice.

  “Do what?”

  That was a good question. She slept with women whom she barely knew all the time. That was how she preferred it, as close to anonymous as she could get—only bodies shared for a moment—nothing else that could be taken for real intimacy.

  Xóchitl was too close. Her breath. Her smell. Mai tried to summon enough anger to push her away, but all she felt was magnetized, pulled inexorably forward. Her stomach dipped, and the want roared through her like an actual fire, scorching any of her remaining senses.

  Then they were kissing again, Mai pressed between Xóchitl’s body and the open driver’s side of the car. It felt good. So damn good. The bleeding away of her mind’s endless calculations and concerns left in their place the wants of her body, its drive to devour and burn and taste and grab every bit of pleasure from the moment.

  Xóchitl made a sound like pain, like she’d been struck in the stomach—a puff of breath, her gasp into Mai’s mouth a moment before she gripped the back of Mai’s neck, her fingers sinking into skin. She deepened the kiss, sucking on Mai’s tongue, licking and biting like there was something in Mai’s mouth that she absolutely needed in order to survive.

  She gripped Mai’s ass and lifted with an effortless strength that made Mai gasp and grab the edge of the car door. But there was no need for her to worry about falling, at least not in that way, because Xóchitl had her. She pushed Mai’s back against the solid edge of the car, one hand firmly on her ass, the other blindly pushing up her skirt. Her fingers rubbed the already-damp crotch of Mai’s panties, and Mai groaned into the hot mouth on hers, already abandoning the grip on the car to grab onto Xóchitl and spread her own thighs wider for the firmer stroke of the woman’s fingers.

  Those fingers slipped past the damp cloth of her panties and into wetness—over Mai’s clit. She bucked in Xóchitl’s hold. Pleasure lanced through her like danger, activating her fight-or-flight response, but there was nowhere to go. The pleasure surrounded her, crowded her in the form of Xóchitl’s too-warm body, the waves of sensation coursing through her from the contact points between them.

  “Oh God…”

  She was dripping and falling back against the roof of the car, her hips moving with the confident stroke of Xóchitl’s fingers. She felt them over her slick wetness, heard the moist kiss of them moving on her, then inside her. The breath shuddered in her throat. Heat and pleasure burst from the movement of Xóchitl’s fingers, from that place of incendiary contact, and then Mai was crying out her bliss into the warm evening. Her body clutched and shuddered in Xóchitl’s embrace, her panties soaked and her thighs trembling. Slowly, Xóchitl lowered her to her feet.

  Her face looked as shocked as Mai felt.

  “Take me home with you,” Xóchitl whispered. Her kisses landed on Mai’s parted and panting lips, on her cheek, her jaw, the side of her neck. “I’ll be so good to you in a bed.”

  Although Mai couldn’t speak, not with the breath running away from her like this, her body was already giving its permission, swaying toward Xóchitl and weeping a yes from between her legs. But a flash of a camera phone trained on them brought her mind abruptly back to reality. She cleared her throat, smoothed her skirt back down her thighs, and turned abruptly away from the camera and the two men chuckling a few feet away.

  Xóchitl growled when she looked over her shoulder and noticed the men. Mai thought for a moment that her eyes flashed a dangerous silver. But it must have been another blast of light from t
he camera phone’s flash.

  “I can’t.” She licked her swollen lips and tasted the already-fading flavor of Xóchitl. “I need to go.”

  Then, before her body could betray her again, she slipped into the small gap between the open door and Xóchitl’s body and dropped down into the car. She started the engine, forcing the woman to step back before she slammed the door shut, and drove out of the parking lot. Her fingers stayed tightly locked around the steering wheel during the entire drive home.

  When she got back to her apartment, she was no clearer on what had just happened. Her mind felt scattered to the four winds, and even the cold shower couldn’t purge the memory of Xóchitl’s hands between her legs, the soft breath on her skin, her sharp teeth grazing the side of Mai’s neck as Xóchitl panted, “Come for me,” just before Mai gratefully did what she commanded.

  It took her hours to finally fall asleep.

  The next day, Mai was a wreck. With every bite of food she took, she swore she tasted Xóchitl on her tongue. Every time she took deep a breath, the familiar scent of vanilla and oranges ghosted through her senses. At one point, she even thought she saw Xóchitl near her condo. But she knew those were all illusions, just as she knew nothing would come of whatever it was they were playing at.

  She was still angry at the woman for the way she had treated her in the bar a few nights before. But the need to reject her wasn’t there anymore. Instead, she wanted to taste her again, to feel what it would be like to make love to her in a bed. But that wasn’t an option for them. Despite their mutual attraction, she didn’t shit where she ate.

  A workplace romance would be a disaster.

  So Mai talked herself out of having anything to do with Xóchitl, other than the occasional hello in the hallway.

  Less than a week after the parking lot mistake, Mai approached the end of her last class of the day with a bone-deep sigh of relief. She had a lead to follow on the Absolution case and already felt a thrum of excitement at the pursuit, even though she wouldn’t be able to start until the next afternoon.