The dinner party was small, a celebration of a LexCorp VP who celebrated himself often enough to make his birthday party almost redundant. But nevertheless, it was held at a swank hotel downtown. Mercy had often attended these kinds of soirees on behalf of Lex, while he stayed in a lab or a bed. Now that she was chairwoman of the board, she had to attend these dull mixers still. She had fostered the illusion that she enjoyed them.
Lana was there as well, and Lois, and Clark, her date. There were some high-priced lawyers that LexCorp was hoping to get into their legal division, and Lana was giving them the velvet glove treatment.
Mercy patrolled the banquet hall as if she were still a bodyguard. The routine was comfortable, though now she was almost playing hostess. She would drop into conversations, advise people on the entrees they should try, attend to the birthday boy with whorish appreciation. It was all a role, one she was ill-suited for, but that just made her try all the harder to fit it. Lex was counting on her to keep the company afloat until he got out.
It was almost as it was when they'd first met. She was nothing more than a thief; he'd had all the power. But he'd helped her, cleaned her up, given her opportunities. Now she had the power. Not his intellect or his ambition, but his power. She had to keep it safe for him. There was nothing she could use it for otherwise.
Lois came up to her, wearing a strapless dress that barely held onto her full breasts. All the work Lex had done to try and get Lois to show her body, and now she flaunted it at his own company while he wasn't there to see it. God, how Mercy loathed her! She had the same audacity that had driven Mercy to swipe Lex's briefcase upon their first meeting, but none of the loyalty or trust or respect that had brought Mercy up to where she was today. All Lois had was... obscenity.
"Mercy. A little hard to recognize you without the chauffeur get-up," Lois said, looking right at home with a martini at hand. "I saw someone who looked just like you the other night, but... no cap. Had to have been someone else."
"Maybe you should get glasses like your friend." Mercy cast her frosty look over to Lois's date. "Kent. Glad you could make it."
He nodded in mildly warm greeting. "Funny, all those years trying to get past you for a quote and now you're the one we want to talk to."
"I still have nothing to say."
Lois chugged her drink. It was one of many, but it didn't show. Lois's eyes leered over Mercy's green gown. "Smallville, why don't you buzz off and let me have a word with sweet-puss here? I'd like to show her something."
"Not interested," Mercy replied curtly.
"So you are interested in your Aerospace Division guy's big six-three?" Lois shrugged as Clark wandered off, looking for undoubtedly either the buffet or the bathroom. "We may have had our differences, but you never struck me as boring."
"Oh, if I'd have struck you, you'd have known it."
Lois grinned challengingly. "You smash me behind closed doors, I won't tell."
"Jerk me around and I will," Mercy threatened.
She gritted her teeth to hide a dry mouth. She knew what might happen if she went off with Lois. She wanted it to happen. But she didn't want to want it.
"Let's go find some boxing gloves," Lois said—teased, as she left the hall. Through one of the luxury hotel's heavy oaken doors, the ingratiating sounds of the party immediately diminished, and they dropped further as Lois led her down the corridor to an elevator.
"The roof?" Mercy asked. "Finally going to jump because Superman won't make you his Superwife?"
"I think we both know that isn't a problem."
Lois got into the elevator, pressed the floor button. The doors started to close with Mercy on the other side. Lois held her hand out and stopped them from shutting.
"You know what's waiting," Lois said. "I'm perfectly willing to go it alone. But it's better with an audience. Even being the audience."
Mercy crossed her arms. "You really think I'm going to give up my company just for a hot fuck?"
"You're willing to do it for Lex," Lois shot back, and took her hand away.
Mercy drove her hand between the doors just before they shut. Arrested again, the doors slid open, and Mercy got into the car, simmering.
"I won't give up LexCorp," she said.
"Think of it as a trade," Lois replied.
The elevator brought them to a large, spacious room that had nothing but a couch and lush carpeting.
"What is this room?" Mercy asked.
"I think the technical term is 'love nest," Lois told her. "The hotel staff likes me—I did an expose on their working conditions. And since I don't leave used condoms or used needles around the place, they let me use it."
"Use it for what?" Mercy demanded unnecessarily.
Lois moved close and Mercy felt her large breasts rubbing against her arm. Mercy jumped back as if she'd been bitten. Lois was smiling. She pressed against Mercy again. Mercy backed away from her, thinking vaguely of combat stances, defenses, but unable to think of anything to defend against this. Not until her back was against the door on the far side of the room and she couldn't go any further. Lois was still smiling. She stepped closer. Her shapely breasts pressed against Mercy's.
"Don't be shy," Lois said. "It's just a corporate restructuring."
"I could have ten women like you, or him," Mercy spat. "I won't give up my chair."
"You don't have to. But you don't have to fight Lana so hard either. Don't you think it'd be more fun... not fighting?"
Mercy groped behind her, trying to find the doorknob. Lois was even closer now. Her body touched Mercy's from shoulder to—
Mercy lifted her knee, driving it sharply into Lois's gut. Lois went down to her knees, gasping for breath with a fierce pain throughout her body. She looked up at Mercy.
"Like you said," Mercy hissed, "as long as we're in private, I get to kick the shit out of you."
"Fine by me, cabbie! But you should know, the only reason you kept Lex safe all those years is because it wasn't me trying to wring his fat neck!"
Lois came up off her knees in a flash, tackling Mercy about the midsection. Mercy made one grunt of surprise as she went backwards, through the cracked door, and landed on her ass.
Lois closed one hand into a fist and, straddling Mercy, swung her arm in a brutal roundhouse. Mercy wasn't able to move in time. She caught the blow on her chin and it had her seeing stars. But she jerked her knees up, slamming them into Lois's back, sending the brunette tumbling over her. In another second, she was on her feet, leaping up, suddenly noticing she was in a bedroom.
On the bed, totally naked but for the sheets that clung to him like lily pads on the surface of a pond, was Superman. "Would you like me to referee?"
