The Lion’s Mail Order Menage

“This is a joke, right?  I mean, it has to be.  Tell me this is a fu*king joke.”

“No sir, no joke at all.  That, my friend, is real life.”

“It can’t be.  I don’t believe you.  There’s no way this sh*t is legal.”

“Seriously?  If anyone should know, it’s you.  Almost everything is legal, at least in some capacity.”

“But this?  It’s just one step above prostitution and it’s plastered all over the internet.”

“But it’s an important step.  That’s the only difference between legal and illegal.  Just a series of baby steps.  Besides, what are you worried about the legality for?  In case you hadn’t noticed, very little of what we do is strictly legal.  We work for a mobster, for Christ’s sake.”

“But this is different.”

“The fu*k it is.”

“It is different, Tyler.  It just is.”

“OK, fine, Caleb.  I’ll bite.  Tell me how it’s different.”

“Because, it’s a person.  It’s not a job, Tyler.  It’s an actual person.”

“It’s two people, actually.”

“Oh Jesus, this has got to be a joke.  So you’re telling me you actually ordered two people off the internet last night?  And you’re OK with that?”

“Well, look at you acting all high and mighty.  What makes you think it was me?”

“Because it isn’t something I would do.”

“Is that so?  Do you know how much convincing it took to get you on board?  About five minutes, that’s how long.  You may not be able to admit it to yourself without a little liquid courage in your body, but you thought it was a good idea.  You knew just as well as I did that it’s the only way we’re ever going to have anyone around we can spend time with and not have things get complicated.”

“Not get complicated?  Not get complicated?  How the fu*k do you figure that, Tyler?  How is it that we’ve got two women we’ve never met coming all the way from Moscow, Russia, two women we ordered off a website for mail order brides, and you think it’s not going to get complicated?  Am I missing something here?”

“Probably,” Tyler said as he stood abruptly, jostling Caleb in the process and inciting a new wave of nausea just as bad as all of the ones that had come before, “I would think that you very likely are.  You want to know why?  Because you don’t understand the way the world works.  You never have.  You want to know what I think?”

“Not particularly, no.”

“Well, I don’t give a rat’s ass.  I’m going to tell you anyway.”

Tyler walked back to the kitchen, poured himself a tall glass of straight, warm whiskey and took a big gulp.  Just looking at it made Caleb’s gorge rise and he wished with everything in him that at least for the moment, he did not have the extraordinary sense of smell that came with being a lion shifter.

He also wished that he wasn’t so pitifully hungover for this conversation.  No, not conversation, fight.  This was the first real, honest to god fight he could ever remember having with Tyler.  He had wondered from time to time what it would be like if the two of them ever got into a situation where they truly opposed each other on something but they had managed to go all of their lives without that happening.

All of their lives except for this day, when something had finally come up that they simply could not agree on.  So no, Caleb didn’t want to know what Tyler thought, but he also knew there was probably nothing he could do to stop him.  Tyler, the pit bull, his best friend and worst threat.  Because Caleb wasn’t under any illusions that Tyler couldn’t be dangerous to him.  He had watched Tyler be dangerous to every person in his life.  There was no reason to expect that Caleb was somehow exempt. 

Without even looking at him, dragging this thing out just to piss Caleb off, Tyler ambled back from the kitchen to the couch right beside his friend.  That smell, sweet Christ, that smell of whiskey unavoidable and almost too much to stand. 

He was enjoying this.  He liked it when he felt like the strongest man in the room.

“Here’s what I think.  I think you would never have survived without me.  You’d of been dead a long time ago.  I’ve protected you, Caleb.  I’ve kept you safe from everything, from this city, from your parents, sh*t, even from yourself.  I’m like the part of you that you don’t like looking at, the part that gets things done.

“You don’t like what I’ve done?  You don’t like it because you aren’t strong enough to do what needs doing.  You’re lucky you have me to do the dirty work.  I know what Geno thinks, that you’re the smart one, that you’re too good for all of this sh*t.  Well piss on that.  There ain’t nothing wrong with being able to get things done.

“When a man gets too refined to get his own hands dirty, that man is one step away from his grave.  So don’t get pissed at me because I got you to do something you didn’t like the look of come morning.  That’s something you’re going to have to figure out how to live with.”

Caleb could feel how close Tyler was to shifting.  He could feel it in himself, too.  They may have had very different personalities but they were both shifters in the end, predators whose nature it was to fight back when attacked.  It was in their blood to do that thing and that was true even when the one they were fighting was one of their own. 

They may have been brothers, but in this moment each one would gladly have torn the other apart.  When Caleb looked back on it later, he realized that it was probably the hangover that allowed them to avoid something catastrophic taking place.  Because he was so drained and so much less physically than he usually was, Caleb didn’t have the energy to meet the anger Tyler was displaying.