Compliments by Mari K. Cicero

Hawk pivots and his lips come down to meet mine. An exploratory tap is followed by a more curious visit, and finally a third long, languid kiss steals my breath and awakens my body. He’s found his mark and managed to turn on a fire within me. As he pulls me closer so that I’m almost as much under him as I am before him, I feel his tongue find mine.
    Nearby, a gaggle of geese skim over the lake’s surface before breaking waves and landing, honking and hollering. Hawk and I are finally distracted enough from our involvement to pull apart and look at the time. I still have class tomorrow, and Hawk still has to teach. As he drives me home, I snuggle against his back with even more need. When he drops me at my door, I’m tempted to ask if he wants to come up stairs, but decide against it knowing that he’ll have to be up in eight hours to get off to class.
    “I’m going to ask you out tomorrow,” he advises, gently pushing away from me at my door. “I want you to be prepared for that, so in case you don’t want to, you have time to come up with a good excuse.”
    “Just ask me now, you silly man.”
    He shakes his head. “You’d be expecting that. Good night, Robin. And thank you.”
    “Thank you?” My arms feel empty when he pulls away. “For what?”
    “For saying yes.”

3 2

    A revolution is breaking out within me. On one side, my logical brain tells me it’s still a bad idea, no matter what parts of my anatomy suggest otherwise. On the other, my lips and my heart embrace the attention Hawk so luxuriously bestows upon them, and tells my brain to go take a flying leap. 
    As promised, he calls me the next day and asks me out again. I answer in a speed that could only be clocked by NASA, and agree to see him on Saturday night. When I remind him that I’m busy this evening attending the chair’s dinner with Prof. Harrison, I can practically see his hackles raise over the phone.
    “Seriously, Hawk, I feel like there’s something you’re not telling me.”
    I hear him sigh. “Just be careful. Harrison has a reputation for pressuring people once he’s set sights on them. Don’t let him monopolize your time at the dinner. Make sure you get face time with the other faculty you’re interested in.”
    I churn that comment a moment. “I will. Besides, I already told you, Harrison’s research isn’t up my alley. I’m only in his class because it’s required in my concentration track.”
    “I know, I know.”
    I hear resignation in his voice, and a fluttering memory throws a pinhole light on our discussion. I wonder if that taboo topic he’s avoiding has anything to do with what Prof. Ferris almost let slip out about Hawk a few days before.
    Suddenly, I find myself blurting out, “Did I ever tell you I have a second degree black belt?”
    “Really? I take it your training didn’t involve dodging offensives by rolled up carpets, then?”
    “I only mention it because I want you to know, first, I’m not foolish. If I feel I’m in danger or uncomfortable with a situation, I remove myself from it. And second, that I can do it by physical force in most cases, if it comes down to it.”
    He exhales in satisfaction. “Damned glad to hear it.”

    The email Harrison said I’d be receiving shows up in my inbox in the mid-afternoon. I find out from asking as covertly as possible that there will be eight students in addition to myself at the dinner. Elizabeth Chen and I are the only women among them. However, that means we’re statistically more than 22% of the students to be present, a number on par with the general enrollment of the department, so I guess I really can’t … or perhaps, shouldn’t complain.
    Then, sometime between mid-afternoon and early evening, I manage to be cursed by gypsies.
    The first bad thing happens around five-thirty p.m., when I leave the Yang Building for home on my bike. The chair, Dr. Phillip Woo, lives in the hills that rise toward the backside of campus, in a gated