Weird How That Is

"Sorry matchstick... your bonfire mommy wouldn't let me go." Shane reached up and outright yanked his cocksleeve's nipples until she shrieked. "But I promise to do better."

Days. Charlotte felt a tear run down her cheek. He promised me a week ago to never touch her again. I'm so fucking stupid.

And so fucking fucked. She knew that then, just like she knew that Shane was truly insatiable, and that she'd still wait for her turn tomorrow. And still double up with Melinda when Shane told them to. She was lost, and all that was left for her was to shuffle back to her bed and try to get some relief inside of oblivion.

As she went, though, she couldn't escape the feeling that'd been nagging at her for some time that there were eyes on her, watching from some kind of hidden vantage.

Weird how that was.

__________

"So let's start with this; was this planned ahead of time?"

The question, and the deep baritone that produced it, penetrated the dark that filled Shane's head, even through the drumbeat that was pounding away in there. He groaned and opened his eyes, and once the blurriness lessened... well, he knew he was in some deep shit.

"Ah hell. You're Mike, right?" Shane tried to sneer, he always tried to sneer, but some instinct took hold and he thought better of it. "Shit. You weren't supposed to be back until—"

"Saturday. By which time you'd have been three states away." The man with the revolver pointed at him smiled, and even in the dim light of what he assumed was the basement, Shane saw an ocean of confidence there. "Right? Maybe alone, maybe not, depending on how well you... did your thing."

The man sitting in the chair across from his was not big, not small. Not ugly, not handsome. Not fit, not fat. He just... was. Shane didn't like that. He'd had bad luck in the past when he'd failed to pigeonhole someone. "You gonna shoot me then? Seems unwise, honestly."

Mike kept smiling while he waved the firearm absently. "This? I really don't think I'll need it, but it'll make sure our conversation happens. That we finish it with full understanding of each other. So let's get the annoying shit out of the way; you were sedated right along with my family. They're upstairs in their beds, alone, enjoying some peace away from you. You're here, about to have a revelation. All caught up?"

Shane nodded and scowled, hating that things had spun out of control for him again. But, really, it was what it was. This guy didn't necessarily want him dead, so he'd adapt. He was good at that. "Okay, a come to Jesus meeting, right? Fine. So... what was that question again? Did I plan it? I mean, I didn't stalk Melinda, if that's what you think. She was pretty easy to hook, and I knew she'd be fun for awhile, but... well, yeah. Once she showed me some pics of her niece and sister-in-law..." He spread his hands as if to say, can you blame me?

Mike snorted. "Like I always say; you don't have to be good as long as you're confident. You're obviously confident, I can't take that away. But, oh holy shit are you ever stupid."

Got my stupid dick into all your women, fucker. Shane was, barely, wise enough to keep that to himself, but was dismally sure that the sentiment was there on his face. "Maybe. But man, you owe me, if you think about it. I don't know how you figured out what was happening here, but I'm guessing, like... security cameras or something?" The small nod of affirmation was all he got. It was enough. "So you saw how easy it was for me. How quick I... did my thing, like you said. Having the truth about your family is better than living a lie, in my book."

To Shane's complete and utter shock, Mike nodded again. "You're not wrong. Oh, it's not what you're thinking; I'm not about bury you in a shallow grave, then go up there and call the three of them sluts and cunts and whores and every other fucking horrible word I can come up with."

Shane shook his head, truly surprised. "So you're just going to take it? I fucked all three rotten for days, made them..." He swallowed and changed tacks. "That is... you don't really seem like, uh, like the type to be... y'know... passive about something like this." Which was why he absolutely had made plans to get the fuck out of Dodge long before this man reappeared. Melinda had painted a real good picture during their trip out here.

"Take it? Not a chance. I know exactly what I'm going to do to them." Mike looked upward for a long, quiet moment, and when he looked back down again, he had to suppress a lump in his throat. "I'm going to fix them. I'm going to do what I should have been doing for years... be better for them."

Mike stood then and began pacing around the room. Shane, despite his captor's tepid reassurances, didn't trust his lack of murderousness nearly enough to try to tackle him or some shit, so he sat there and listened. Time for revelations, just like Mike said.

"Melinda must have told you that our parents were monsters, and growing up with them made me cynical and suspicious of every damned thing around me. That's the reason for the cameras. Honestly, it's not that I didn't trust my wife and daughter, it's that I didn't trust the world. I knew they, and the home we'd built, were prizes. Ripe on the tree and waiting to be plucked. I was ready for you before I knew you existed. I just..." he quickly ran a palm down his face, "I wasn't ready for any of the rest of it. I thought... I assumed, things I obviously shouldn't have."

Mike turned to face Shane full on then. "I didn't check the cameras until I had free time, and by then it was too late. It made me puke more than once, seeing what I saw after the damage had already been done. Oh, sure, I could have called the house and railed and screamed, but that's not what was going to make this right. Honesty is." The penitent man gritted his teeth, his eyes almost alight with anger as he stared down his captive.

"I watched my baby sister, my first daughter in all but name, farm out her dignity to a piece of shit, and I knew it was because she'd spent her whole life so afraid of not living up to my expectations that the idea of surrender looked like salvation.

"I watched my little girl have the shell that I formed around her broken from inside like a chick reaching for the heat lamp, because the idea of warmth felt like something she'd never had from a man.

"I watched... watched my Charlotte..." At that, Mike did choke up, and it took long enough for him to recover that Shane actually began to contemplate making a move, but the man pulled it together before he could twitch. "I saw my other half lose a war with herself because I'd forgotten who she was. I forgot the girl that had been the sunlight in my cave. The woman that was the air in my lungs. Oh god... I just... I thought she'd always... be there. Waiting. I... I think she did too, until her body was reminded that it was just as important as her heart."

"Man, just... just let me go." Shane was done. He didn't like this one bit, and he desperately wanted it to stop. This guy was... this was rough. "You'll never see me again, they'll never—"

"Partial credit." Mike grunted. "But you're still stupid as hell." He sat back down, his angst under control once more. "So here's what's going to happen; you will disappear. Become nothing but a bad memory. For them. Not for me, though. Not for the rest of your life."

"I... what?" Shane narrowed his eyes. "What's that even mean? Not for you?"

"Justice is what it means. I'm not a martyr. You're going to pay for what you did, and by paying you'll be, in a way, rebuilding what you tore down." He raised a hand. "Don't even open your idiot mouth, I'll be spelling it out for you, don't worry. What's next is that I give you an email account that I set up for you for one purpose only; getting messages from me. When you get those messages, and you'll be getting plenty, you will reply and tell me that you've seen them. And before you get any ideas, you'll be replying in a manner that lets me know that it's you, not some bot or something. You'll be describing back to me what I show you."

Shane grimaced. The details were still fuzzy, but the implications were becoming clearer and clearer. "Fuck. Do I even want to ask how you're so sure?"

"Don't care. You're gonna hear it either way." Mike's smile then would have looked right at home on a great white shark. "The reason my family fell to you is the reason you're going to fall to me. I've spent a long time, too much time, building a network for my business, and it was almost disappointingly easy to find out everything about you, Shane, King of Scum. One of the first things was that you've done shit like this before. Crossed people you underestimated... and made some real enemies in the process. Hence, why you're stupid as hell. Just can't learn, apparently."

Shane shrugged, trying and failing to come off as collected. "Little head has a big hold on me, what can I say?"

"Nothing. Completely pointless now." Mike began waving his pistol as he kept on, and Shane started sweating. "All that's left is for me to tell you that... arrangements have been made. You don't follow the plan, or you make a play at the planner, and your name gets out there. You answer my emails with your location and a GPS pin every single time, or the dogs get loosed for the hunt. Get my drift?"

"...that's it?" Shane couldn't believe it. "No extortion? No bullet? No... castration? Just, look at what you send me and let you know where I am?" All his breath went out at once. "And I'll walk out of here tonight, free and clear?"

"Free and clear." Mike nodded towards the basement door. "Expect my messages soon enough."

Still half-sure he was going to get a bullet in the back, Shane nonetheless made a beeline for the exit. Like the moron Mike said he was, though, he stopped on the stairs and looked back. "And the girls?"

Mike darkened up at that. "What can I say? They betrayed me, there's no denying it. They had a choice, and they chose to throw me aside in no time flat. Disrespect me and spit on everything I'd sacrificed for them. So yeah, plenty of people out there would expect me to get revenge. Exile my sister, disown my daughter... divorce my wife."

Mike's lips pressed into tight, thin lines for a second as his nostrils flared, but then the muscles eased and he went on. "Then what? Tell myself that all three will live the rest of their lives wallowing in regret for crossing me? That they'll be constantly begging for forgiveness, over and over for years, and in between be miserable, sitting alone in shitty apartments, staring wistfully out the window and wishing they could turn back time and do it all over again, but dying alone and bitter? Grow the fuck up. That's now how people work."

Shane had a hand on the knob, but something made him pause. Of all the men he'd fucked with over the years, this was one was giving a new response, and he felt compelled to hear the last bit.

"People don't stay miserable. They can't. If I cut the three of them out of my life as some kind of punishment, or to show them that it's one strike and you're out when you mess with me... well, they'd survive. They'd survive, and adapt, and eventually make lives that I didn't exist in except for rare memories that they'd just stuff down before smiling and getting on with things. I'd become the asshole. Hell, worse than that. I'd become the temper-tantrum throwing child that they were better off without. Eventually, they'd convince themselves that what they did wasn't so bad, and things had worked out for the best.

"That's real life. That's what happens when assholes try to get revenge. It's masturbation, pure and simple, and it's fucking pathetic."

Shane had no response to that. He didn't want one. Shit, he wished he hadn't heard it, because all he was thinking was how, if someone did to him what he'd done to Mike, there'd be hell to pay for years to come. He was an alpha, and alphas don't get fucked with, they do the fucking... despite the occasional, temporary setback.

Good thing for him that Mike was a dumbass beta cuck.

As he scurried out of the house with nothing but his cellphone and a pair tighty-whiteys, hoping he could find someone he hadn't royally pissed off enough to refuse a call begging for some help, Shane never once, though, entertained the thought of not following Mike's instructions to the letter.

Weird how that was.

__________

Shane became a bit of an obsession as the years passed, Mike knew that. He was okay with it though, because that obsession—hobby, really—made him so, so goddamned happy.

From the moment he sent the first video link to Scum King's email... with the private eye he'd hired hiding and waiting to record his reaction... Mike knew he'd made the right decision. Of course, the video in question was a doozy; a tearful Melinda, round belly obvious to the world, hugging him with tears in her eyes when gave her the keys to her own house with a promise that he would be there for her and her son no matter what she decided to do with the rest of her life, and that decision, whatever it was, would make him as proud as the father he'd always tried to be to her.

According to the private eye, Shane almost threw his phone into a ditch at the next part.

"I'm naming him Michael." Mellie's proclamation was hard to hear, between her sniffles and the sounds that Steph and Char made in the background. Her face pressed to Mike's chest and death-squeeze on his ribs didn't help either. "I'm giving him the only legacy he'll ever need from any man."

Shane's reply to that email was a terse; "Melinda's pregnant with my son and she's naming it after you."

Over the years, through all the videos of little Mikey getting bigger while idolizing his uncle, and all the responses from Shane that simmered with frustration, Mike still liked that first one the best.

Still wasn't enough, though. Not nearly. The video of Stephanie's wedding to a man that was like Mike reincarnated had its own, special charm. The private eye was called on again so Mike could watch Scum King's take on that. Really, Shane wasn't all that fazed by it... until the reception toast.

Glass raised, Mike had let 'er rip. "To my wonderful, genius, fantastic daughter, who's discovered more than I ever could have hoped... especially that sometimes life can hit you in the face with a turd, but that's only so you can learn to dodge them once you keep going!"

There were some polite laughs—and some real ones from Melinda and Charlotte—but the crowd didn't really get it. Steph, on the other hand...

"To vanished pieces of shit! May they stay forever dodged!" The new bride then proceeded to try to suck the fillings out of a very grateful, if flabbergasted, groom.

Some videos Mike knew he should have been at least a bit ashamed of sending... but he wasn't.

"God... goddamn... oh holy shit, where... how..." Charlotte's babbling had been going on for a good five minutes, and was getting more incoherent by the second. In the video—captured from the one security cam that Mike had kept in for... special purposes—the middle-aged wet dream was bracing herself on the bedpost in a desperate attempt to stay upright as Mike... made love... to her from behind. Made love with his cock in her ass and his fingers on every secret spot that set her off like a nuke.

"Oh, holy hell, how... how long can... hnnnggg..." Eyes screwed shut, Charlotte dissolved into a puddle before she could finish her question, but Mike answered anyway.

"All that time in the gym is paying off, you fucking sex goddess." Mike had kept up his animalism, his claiming of his mate, even as she dropped to her knees. "I can go all night." He leaned forward, stretching himself over her slick, shuddering form to plant a firm kiss on her cheek. "And I'm gonna."

With her loving husband's dick still sodomizing the hell out of her, Charlotte somehow managed to brush some clinging crimson strands out of the way enough to kiss him back, then had to pause to get her breath. "This is... Mike, this is the best." They both stopped and locked eyes. "I'm serious. The Best. It's..." A long, sensuous tremor rolled through her. "I've never had better. I mean that from the bottom of my heart."

"I love you Charlotte, with everything in me." Mike's rutting really did turn into lovemaking then, and his wife began shedding some tears.

"Forever." Charlotte moaned out the word. "Never any..." She stopped, swallowed, and wiped her cheeks. "You and me, you sex god. Just you and me. Nothing has or will ever come close to this. To... you."

Shane didn't reply to that last email, even when he had to the previous ones that'd shown Charlotte turning back into a besotted teenager again. Mike had to admit that he wasn't really surprised. The fact that the King of Scum had endured for even five years was actually unexpected. It was fine, though. He'd gotten what he wanted from Shane; the motivation to become what he needed to become for the women he loved more than his own life, and the reminder of what losing vigilance could bring.

Still, Mike was a man of his word, and he'd told Shane what the consequences would be if he broke their deal. So a few calls were made, a few contacts gained, and whole lot of leads were given. He hadn't lied once; there was plenty of... let's say, curiosity, out there concerning Shane's whereabouts that Mike was more than happy to satisfy. What surprised him, though, was that the number one hound on the trail was a woman. An unmarried, middle-aged one at that. Someone named Isabelle.

Weird how that was.