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She’d always assumed that she wasn’t evil enough. It had to be why her husband always seemed so sad and disinterested. If she could just be more of a true villain, he would pay attention to her the way he paid attention to his work and they would be happy together.
She tried, over and over, but she never really had the energy to be evil after a long day of taking care of the kids and trying to keep the house clean. She felt guilty nearly all the time for not being strong enough, not being bad enough. She was a good mother but that didn’t mean anything if she couldn’t be a bad person for her husband.
After he left her for the handsome secret agent, she managed to get his lair in the divorce. He didn’t try to fight her for it, he said that there were too many bad memories there. She didn’t try to fight him over the house for the same reason.
They agreed to a shared custody agreement with 50/50 parenting time and she suddenly had more free time than she ever had before. She realized that she was actually very good at being evil once she had the time and space in which to do it. Most of her ex-husband’s ex-henchpeople agreed to work for her. She surveyed them to find out what had been working before and what hadn’t and she revamped the whole evil organization to make it more efficient. The henchpeople praised her for being a better leader than her husband had been. The children were coping with the divorce surprisingly well and she had a whole new fancy evil wardrobe and more power than she’d ever imagined. She was thriving.
Her underlings captured her ex-husband and brought him in for interrogation. He and his new boyfriend had been trying to thwart her evil schemes, they said. “Strap him to the table,” she told them. He would know which one she meant.
She left him there for almost an hour before she approached him. She started walking stiffly, like a proper villain, but then she decided to borrow a page from his playbook and spun around on her foot. Once she knew she had his attention, she twirled and danced all the way toward him.
“I didn’t know you could dance,” he said. He sounded very uncomfortable.
“I was learning it to surprise you. You always liked dancing, I thought it would make you happy. I never got a chance to show you.” She managed to keep her voice steady as she said this. She felt like she was almost out of breath but it was probably from all the dancing.
“Look, I know it seems like I was never into women, but-”
“You just weren’t into me in particular? Is that it?”
He looked hurt. She wanted to cut the stupid expression off his face. She drew a large knife, contemplating actually doing that. Her husband had always enjoyed his lasers but she preferred to be up close and personal.
He didn’t react, so she pressed the knife against his throat. He swallowed hard. “You look good like this,” he finally said.
“You finally notice me?” She gestured with the knife, too close to his face. “I spend years trying to get your attention and this is what it takes for you to notice me?”
He looked hurt again and she hated it.
She tapped the knife against the gold metal of his nose. “I loved you.” Her voice sounded more angry than she’d intended. “I loved you and I tried everything to be the wife I thought you deserved.” She was running the tip of the knife along the edge where the metal prosthesis met his skin, almost like she was trying to pry it off. “I tried so hard and it was never enough but my problem the whole time was that I wasn’t him.”
“I’m sorry!”
She pulled back away from him, startled, and nearly dropped the knife.
“I’m sorry! I’m so, so sorry. I know I was awful to you but you don’t understand how miserable I was all the time. I kept trying to be a villain because that’s what I was supposed to be but I hated every minute of it and it made me so depressed that I couldn’t see any way out of it. I should have been honest with you about how I was feeling. You didn’t deserve this.”
She didn’t trust herself to respond without crying. She turned around and walked away, trying to hold herself stiffly again. She was so focused on her villain walk that she didn’t notice she was walking into a trap until she stepped in it and a metal cage sprung up around her.
“What the hell?” She turned around to see that her husband’s new secret agent boyfriend was in the process of rescuing him. He must have known when the henchpeople would be on lunch break, and then he set the trap while she was too distracted with the interrogation. She watched helplessly while the agent picked the locks on the manacles and rescued him. The agent turned to her and winked.
“You’ll never get away with this!” she yelled.
They ignored her, dancing out the door together in perfect synchronization.
It was barely a week later before she found herself strapped to a table in their base.
“It’s not a lair,” the secret agent was saying. “Heroes have bases, not lairs.”
“Lairs have better uniforms,” she said. “You call yourselves good but you can’t even do a decent job of dressing the people who work for you. No wonder my husband’s people agreed to work for me instead.”
“You’re getting too powerful, ma’am. Your villainous schemes have to be stopped for the good of everyone.”
“What, no lasers? You’re just going to try to shame me to death instead?”
He smiled. “You’re good at this.”
“I know I’m good at this. I should have been running the evil organization all along, not him.”
“He’s where he belongs now.”
She had to admit that her ex actually seemed happier than he ever had before.
“You’re handsome,” she said. “I can see why you were able to seduce him into changing sides.”
“You think so? You’re not bad-looking yourself. I’ve seen old pictures of you and the red lipstick and curls were nice but I think I like this look better.”
She flexed against the manacles and noticed how he watched her body when she did it.
“Do you ever tie him down in bed like this? Or does he tie you down so you can roleplay how you two first met?”
The agent smiled and leaned over so that his face was close to hers. He moved to grab her face with his hand and she had to force herself not to flinch but he was surprisingly gentle, just resting his fingers against her cheek.
She didn’t stop. “I bet you’re filthy in bed, aren’t you? All you straight-laced hero types are once you’re behind closed doors.”
“You think you’re so clever, don’t you?” He brushed his thumb against her face. “I bet you think you know exactly how to get under my skin.”
She leaned up to close the distance between them, kissing his mouth. She could feel him gasp softly. He didn’t kiss her back but he didn’t pull away from her either.
They were interrupted by a familiar voice coming from somewhere off to the side.
“What are you doing?”
The agent did pull away now and she turned to see that her ex-husband was there. He looked shocked but he was also very visibly aroused. She had a sudden thought that she wished she was wearing her old red lipstick, so that he would see it on his new boyfriend’s face.
Finally, finally, the entire room filled with a thick cloud of black smoke. “What took you so long?” she asked.
“Sorry, it was hard to find the place,” one of her henchpeople called out. She felt them free her and help her to her feet. It sounded like some of her other employees were restraining her two captors to stop them from chasing after her.
The next time she was actually invited to their base, not captured. They were both waiting for her in what looked like a small conference room.
“Where are the kids, anyway?” she asked. It wasn’t her week with them but they didn’t seem to be here either.
“With my parents,” the agent said. “They were so excited to find out that they have grandchildren now.”
That… was actually really nice to hear. They were good kids, they needed more supportive adults in their lives. But she was getting distracted. “Why have you brought me here?”
Her ex spoke this time. “You’re not going to stop, are you? Don’t answer that, it was a rhetorical question. You’re getting too powerful and it’s taking up too much of our resources to try to stop you. I was hoping that we could negotiate.”
She stood up and twirled a bit. This was their base, she could try to speak their language. She walked around the table until she was on the same side as them and sat down on the edge of the table. She looked down at both men.
“Did the two of you talk about how you saw me kissing him, and how much you enjoyed watching it?” She lifted her foot up and nudged the toe of her boot between her ex’s legs, against his groin. She was careful to just press down enough to rub him through his pants but not enough to hurt him. She could feel that he was starting to get hard, either from what she was doing with her foot or from the memory of watching her kiss his lover. “I haven’t been able to turn you on like this in years.”
He met her gaze with a soft expression. He was getting increasingly aroused but he wasn’t upset like he had been when she had him strapped to the table. “You seem happier too now, it’s nice. Too bad that it’s put us on opposite sides.”
The agent stood up. She imagined that he was feeling left out and it made her smirk to herself. He grabbed her thighs with gentle but firm hands and shoved himself between them, moving her foot away from what she’d been doing. His body felt solid and warm between her legs and she could feel herself starting to breathe harder. She very much wanted to grind herself against him.
“Can we at least discuss you staying out of the city?” he was saying. “You can keep your lair where it is, just don’t cause problems in town and we’ll turn a blind eye to whatever you do out of town.”
“Mmm, but which definition of the city limits are you using? And what about the river? Are you going to get in my way when I’m on the water? You’re graciously allowing me to keep using the lair, but are you going to try to put limits on what I can do inside it?”
“Details,” her ex said. He got up too and stood behind the agent. The agent’s tall body was blocking her from seeing him but he was still talking to her. “If you agree to work with us, we’ll write up a contract and draw lines on a map if that’s what it takes to satisfy you.”
“I’m not satisfied yet,” she started to say, but then she felt the agent’s dick throb in his pants when her ex-husband grabbed his hips from behind. She had to stop herself from moaning out loud. “You know, I think the three of us can come to an arrangement that satisfies everyone.”