A Lover's Mercy

by Fiona Zedde

  The enforcers are powerful, and most of us have more than one skill. We usually keep at least one hidden from everyone but our enforcer team. This secrecy is a habit that’s very hard to break. Even with the people we love.

  “Very soon,” I whisper against her lips like a vow. “I won’t have a single secret that doesn’t belong to you.”

  Chapter 4

  “Where are you going?” Mai, her voice a sleepy whimper, rolls over and latches her arm around me, trying to stop me from leaving the bed. The sheets I just pulled up to her shoulder slip down to her bare hips.

  It’s 4:45 a.m. Or so the cool blue numbers of the bedside clock tell me.

  A soft sigh leaves her lips as my mouth presses a light kiss underneath her jaw. “Just across the hall. Only for a little while.”

  For me, it’ll be a little while, but for her, it’ll be the rest of the night. Sleep is done for me. My body only requires about two hours’ worth, and I’ve reached my max at nearly three. After our breakfast picnic in the park, we stumbled into the apartment for hours of skin-clawing sex that left us both exhausted. Now my body is re-energized and too restless to stay in bed anymore.

  With two months of sleeping in the same bed, Mai already knows this. Doesn’t mean she likes it, though. I kiss her again. “When you wake up later, we can have sex for breakfast.”

  She makes some noises of agreement and snuggles under the thin covers, apparently satisfied with my answer.

  I shuffle my way down the hall and past things on the walls that have gradually expanded from simply her things to ours. A framed photo of me and my sister. Two pairs of Aztec warrior masks, one set in gold and the other in turquoise. A miniature shawl my Tia Ana knitted for me when I was a child. These things of mine blend seamlessly with Mai’s travel photos, some small paintings she’s gathered over the years, and other things she’s shifted to make room for me.

  Sometimes I think that I should probably get my own place. I’m spending way too much time here for someone who’s not paying the mortgage or Netflix bill. Mai hasn’t said anything about me being that one-night stand who just never left. In fact, since I came home with her from her first and only trip to the place in Mexico I call home, she’s been making noises about me living here with her forever.

  But that’s just a little too much for a two-month relationship. Even if we are lesbians. Or queer. Or whatever.

  Looking at the pieces of our lives woven together on the walls of her home, I realize I’m not going anywhere.

  In her quiet office, I sit at the desk and open my laptop.

  My inbox for Professor Xóchitl Bentley looks like I haven’t checked it in days. Student pleas for extra time on papers. Administrators at the college telling me how to run my classes. Emoji-laden subject lines shouting about the hot single ladies in my area.

  Even though I cut back to part-time hours at the university—mostly teaching online seminars and with only one face-to-face class during the week—my email load seems the same as before. Too damn much. After erasing most of the messages, I switch to my encrypted enforcer mailbox.

  Only three messages. Good.

  Sometimes email seems like such a primitive way for the enforcers to communicate when we’re not officially on the job. But it’s also nice that I don’t have to immediately respond or look someone in the face (or mind) when I’d rather be doing something else.

  Obviously, I have a love-hate relationship with my work email.

  The first email is a group message from Farr, one of the enforcers on my team, to the rest of us. I click on it, and a video of a cat trying to run up a plastic playground slide starts playing to the music of 50 Cent’s “In Da Club.” The video ends pretty much the same way it starts, with the cat in the same place it started. I snort laugh and reply with a middle-finger emoji.

  The subject line of the second email drains the smile from my face. Redstone Hearing.

  It’s from the office of the Chief Enforcer of the North American region: basically, my boss, Wren Tall Trees, the gravel-voiced woman who’s in charge of all three commander-led enforcer teams in North America and the sub-commanders and their teams under us.

  Reflexively, I glance toward the door and the room where Mai is sleeping peacefully before opening the message. A thorough reading of the email tells me things I don’t want to know—or to be true.

  Commander—The trial for Ethan Redstone will be in one month. Your presence as one of the arresting officers is required during these proceedings. Through a change in protocol, the family will be allowed to speak in the criminal’s defense, and their words have the potential to affect the ultimate outcome. See details of time and place below.

  A muscle is ticking in my jaw, and my fingers curl into the edge of the computer until it creaks. After all the time and effort I put into finally catching the man who killed my sister, just the word of his family might “affect the ultimate outcome?”

  That’s bullshit.

  A loud crash jerks me to my senses—a glass apple from the desk shattered against the wall. Flung by me. My hitching breath fills the room, and my chest feels like it’s about to crack in two. I force myself to calm down.

  This isn’t the time to lose it.

  Ethan Redstone has been in a holding cell at the North American enforcer headquarters for months now. For as long as Mai and I have been officially together.

  That’s not normal.

  Enforcers don’t keep prisoners. Holding cells are meant to keep a captive for a few days, weeks at the most. Not up to a month. Hearings, usually held within days or weeks of criminals being caught, are usually a formality. When we find a criminal, we know without a doubt that they are guilty. We don’t strike until we are certain. Ethan Redstone is guilty, no matter how many members of his family they can scrape together to say how good he is at water polo and doesn’t deserve to die.

  He may not be guilty of all the charges—certainly not of being the Absolution Killer—but he did kill helpless Meta children. He tried to kill Mai. He killed my sister.

  The memory of the day that I found Ixchel rises up, an agony. Her body broken, discarded on the side of the road like trash. Brown eyes frozen wide and empty. From her mother, I discovered she was missing, tracked her, but found her too late. My failing. My fault.

  I can’t fail her again. I won’t.

  My vision goes red, and the room around me wavers like I’m seeing it through a haze of intense heat. The blood rushes like liquid fire through my veins, and it’s like I can feel every pathway my blood burns, every organ it feeds.

  Ethan Redstone.

  When I tracked him down with every intention of killing him, I didn’t give a damn who his family was. When I ripped his father apart with my bare hands, I cared even less. Men like these don’t get to wreak havoc on the world, my world, and get away with it.

  The sound of burning plastic drags my mind back to the here and now. In my hand. The computer mouse is nothing but melted pieces of black plastic dripping down between my fingers and all over the desk.

  Shit. I can’t be a freeloader and the one who breaks her girlfriend’s stuff.

  The chair jerks across the floor with a squeal as I jump to my feet and start cleaning up the mess. The burnt mouse and broken paperweight. It doesn’t take long for me to finish up and get back to checking my email.

  Thank God the rest of it is boring. More of the usual.

  Our weekly, in-person briefing is coming up in a few days. Then there’s a request from a team out west for a standby backup in case they need help putting down a Meta who’s been drinking human and Meta blood in Vegas.

  A big part of my job as an enforcer is to stay ready. Sometimes watching and investigating, but mostly waiting in the wings like some invincible, fire-breathing dragon ready to burn away any signs of infection in the Meta communities. This waiting gives us a lot of free
time to get into a little trouble on our own.

  Speaking of trouble…

  My thoughts drift again to the woman sleeping nearby. My lover. My heart. She needs to know about her cousin’s idiotic hearing, and the sooner the better. But am I going to be the one to tell her?

  Yes. I have to be. I won’t treat her like glass. I won’t lie to her.

  A few minutes later, I slip into bed next to Mai and pull her body back against mine. Making soft, sleepy sounds, she reaches for me, her fingers slipping up my neck and into my hair. Her butt wriggles into the cradle of my hips, and she sighs. She smells like sleep and contentment. Neither of which will last long when I tell her what I need to.

  I take a deep breath. Any possibility of the promised breakfast sex is about to evaporate like water on hot pavement.

  But when we came together to make this thing work, we promised no secrets, no lies.

  “Mai.” With a firm grip, I still the provocative motion of her hips before it makes me lose my nerve. “There’s something you need to know, and I don’t think you’ll like it.”

  Chapter 5

  “Do you think it’s true that Professor Bentley and Mai Redstone are fucking?” a male voice asks from nearby. “I hope so. That would be kinda hot.”

  The student papers I just gathered slip from my hands and scatter all over my desk.

  What?

  I know who it is. Michael, a student from my class just letting out, is halfway down the hallway and practically out of the building, but my senses are trained to pick up any mention of Mai’s name now.

  “Stop being disgusting. They’re both like thirty or something,” his friend, a girl I’ve never had in my class, responds with a sound of revulsion.

  Michael snorts. “You don’t think that way when you’re stalking Professor Green on Instagram and writing fan fiction about him online.”

  “That’s different. He’s such a DILF, crazy sexy…”

  The two students keep walking, and I allow their voices to fade away. A sweep of the minds around them yields not even the slightest curiosity about their conversation. Damn, they really have nothing better to talk about. With a shake of my head, I pick up the scattered essays and slip them into my bag. More work for my TA to deal with later.

  Right now, it’s lunchtime and I have a date.

  It doesn’t take me long to reach the little Lebanese restaurant near campus. It’s close enough that the bright purple high heels I wear with my gray shift dress don’t get the chance to start truly hurting my feet.

  The smell of roasting meat greets me at the restaurant door. It smells nice enough, but what I wouldn’t give for a platter of chiles rellenos right now.

  Immediately I spot Mai sitting at a small table at the back of the small restaurant. Her back is to the wall, she has a half-finished glass of water in front of her, and at her feet is her school briefcase, probably full of student papers to start grading if I showed up any later.

  She and I haven’t talked much about her cousin’s upcoming hearing other than to confirm we’ll both be there. Mai is frightened and furious, but she’s released all that for now so we can enjoy each other and the life we’re building together. Still, the specter of the hearing hovers over us. It’s only a matter of time before it pounces.

  That time is not today, though.

  “Hello, lovely.”

  Her answering smile lights up my whole world.

  They’re wondering about us. My thought slips seamlessly into Mai’s mind as I lean down to kiss her mouth in greeting.

  “As long as it’s just speculation and they don’t know anything for sure, it shouldn’t matter.”

  It doesn’t matter anyway, I want to tell her but don’t. To me, this human job and identity are disposable. But she doesn’t feel the same. It’s her way to escape her family and so much more.

  My lips seek hers again. My way of letting her know that our mini-discussion is over. Her teeth sink into my lips before pulling back. She’s smiling.

  Like a fool, I smile right back. “What are we trying today?”

  Mai has made a game out of discovering things about each other and this new world we share. The goal is to take nothing for granted. So we’re trying every restaurant near the university together and also trying everything on the menu. At times, it’s been a little horrifying. Mai’s palate thinks most food is different and interesting and to be savored. But everyone knows Mexican food is the best food.

  “I’m not sure,” she says. “I’ve been looking at the menu while you took your sweet time getting here”—Mai nudges my foot under the table to let me know that she’s joking—“but I haven’t decided yet.”

  “Why don’t you pick something for us?” Like most of the places we’ve stumbled into so far, this doesn’t seem like my kind of food. But with Mai, I’m open to trying anything. The drinks look far more interesting. After a quick glance at the menu, I already know what I’ll get for us.

  I think it gives Mai a thrill when I tell her what “we” want. There’s a swing in her slender hips as she saunters up to the counter to order. As usual, she looks both elegant and sexy in her “professional” clothes. Although she seems to have no idea, the outfit of a black, high-collared dress with the red belt and matching heels have dominatrix all over it. No wonder she stars in half her students’ masturbation fantasies.

  As I reluctantly pull my gaze away from her backside, I catch a glimpse of someone vaguely familiar. Cropped yellow blouse, jeans. Hair in braids. Oh yeah. A student I ran into in the hallway near my office earlier. Once identified, my senses release the details of the girl and her nagging sense of familiarity. We’re near the university; of course there’s bound to be a student or ten at these little cheap restaurants nearby.

  “Hey, you want to help me with these?” Mai calls to me a few minutes later from the counter. Our entire order looks ready and seems like far too much to carry on her own.

  “Coming, darling.” Like a good little wife in training, I rush to do her bidding.

  “You’re not fooling anyone with that act,” she says when I meet her at the counter and pick up the overflowing tray. She gets our drinks and heads back to our table, hips swaying like a dinner bell.

  “Are you sure? What if I let you—what do the kids call it—top tonight? Would that prove to you how completely devoted and sincere I am?”

  She almost drops the paper cups full to the brim with our drinks. Jallab, according to the menu. Something fruity that smells like roses. “Stop playing with me.” Mai goes to sit down, and I watch because it entrances me every time she does it. Slowly bending, she slides one full butt cheek on the chair, then slides all the way over with an intriguing motion of her hips. This woman makes sitting down into an art, or at least one of the chapters of the Kama Sutra.

  I show her my sharp teeth. “If you think this is playing, wait until tonight.”

  Mai purses her lips and settles the tray more evenly between us, the drinks like exclamation marks on both sides of our plates of food. Her butt wriggles a bit more in the chair, and I’ve no doubt she’s doing it to me on purpose.

  “I thought you said you’d let me top tonight?” she asks with a smirk.

  The piece of kibbeh I put in my mouth is unexpectedly nutty and delicious. It slides over my tongue like a deep-fried dream. “You do know if I have to let you top, we’re already in trouble.”

  Her tongue pokes out at me, and I laugh. Mai tears off a piece of the bread and eats it slowly enough to make it a tease. Her fingers are slick from the oils in the bread. She puts those glistening fingers in her mouth, one by one, and licks them off, eyeing me the whole time. Of course, she grins when I nearly swallow my tongue watching her.

  It’s been an unexpected bit of paradise getting to know her and allowing her to see some real parts of me. Before meeting her, the thought of being with so
meone who challenges me and makes me want to shift and accommodate their presence in my life was about as appealing as childbirth. But now, if she cracked my chest open and examined me from brain to tiny toes, I’d tell her that she missed a spot just to get her to spend more time giving me her full attention.

  Mandaia-Pili Redstone. My lover. My heart.

  She’s nothing like the woman who gave birth to her and named her. She’s better.

  They’re both beautiful and powerful Metas with complete willingness to use the very limits of these powers to protect the people they love. But while Mandaia is a hammer, Mai is a slow-working poison. By the time you realize just how dangerous she is, it’s far too late to do anything about it.

  But my woman’s poison is kindness and mercy, and I’ve only just started to realize how dangerous those things are to me, and how far beneath her spell I’ve fallen.

  Chapter 6

  “Just for the record, I don’t want to be here.” Although it’s pure silk, the spaghetti-strap dress feels uncomfortable on my otherwise bare body. Stirred by the wind from the balmy evening, the hem flutters around my knees as light as a new lover’s touch.

  “You’ve already said that,” Mai says, and presses the doorbell to her family home. “Eight times since we got in the car. Maybe even nine.”

  The half-dozen silver bangles along my arm chime with the sound of warning bells when I put my hand on the small of her back. “Just so you don’t have any false expectations about tonight. I’m not here to make nice with them but I promise at least not to embarrass you.” Then I remember the people who make up her family and what their expectations probably are. “At least not on purpose.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not deluded.” Despite my churlishness, Mai leans in to me with a smile on her red-painted lips. She’s wearing all black tonight, slim-fitting slacks, and a blouse that makes the red on her mouth especially distracting. “Thank you for coming with me tonight. I can’t tell you how much this means to me.”