Mindfuck - A Bad Boy Romance With A Twist (Mind Games Book 1)

by Gabi Moore

  “Let’s get out of here before they get any more ideas, huh?” he said and gave me a saucy wink. While the crowd knotted around the spectacle, Todd and I slunk out again, leaving the bucket of ice on the table and quietly closing the door behind us. My back against the closed door, I took a deep breath of fresh outside air and found myself laughing.

  “What the hell is going on in there?” I asked, still giggling, when I noticed for the first time that we were holding hands. I quickly yanked free and stopped laughing.

  “Let’s go for a walk before they realize we’re gone,” he said.

  Seemed like a good idea.

  We walked off quickly down the corridor and back to the stern, and with swift fingers he pulled out a cigarette, lit it with a match, flicked the burnt match away and then gently handed me the cigarette. It wasn’t the kind of chivalry I was used to, but it thrilled me all the same. I took it and we walked on briskly.

  “Very brave of you, running away before your friends could mutilate your butt cheeks,” I said, still laughing under my breath. It had been a long time since I had been in a party that wild, and all at once I realized that even though I hadn’t thought of it for years, I missed that kind of thing. The camaraderie. The energy.

  “Before?” he said and widened his eyes. I looked at him and laughed.

  “Oh my god. No way. They already…?”

  He made a hilarious puppy dog face and pouted his lower lip out. I squealed with laughter.

  “No! They already marked you! That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard,” I said, but I couldn’t stop laughing at the face he was making.

  “Sadly so,” he said, and I had trouble tearing my gaze away from how twinkly his eyes seemed out here in the open air of the deck.

  “On your …on your butt?” I asked and took another drag.

  He said nothing.

  “Oh my god, you’re actually blushing!” I said and poked his ribs.

  “Shut up. No I’m not. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  We reached the end of the ship and came to rest at the railings again.

  “Come on, show me.”

  He snapped his neck so quickly to look at me I thought he’d give himself whiplash.

  “Haven’t you seen enough bare butt for today…?” he said and took a drag, then flicked the stump over the edge and into the water.

  “I want to see. I’ll trade you a cigarette.”

  “You don’t have any!”

  “Yeah, but you still owe me one, so...”

  “He was laughing hard now. A good-natured, easy laugh that did strange things to the pit of my stomach. This guy was clearly a charmer. I bet he was the kind of guy that bedded a new woman every night. And yet, I was finding it hard to resist laughing along with him.

  Then I saw him. A few yards ahead, walking in the crowd in the opposite direction: Anthony. He was dressed. Looking for me.

  Shit.

  I took one last hurried puff, tossed the cigarette overboard and gave Todd a nervous smile.

  “Hey, um, I have to go,” I said, nervously noticing that Anthony hadn’t spotted me yet.

  “Go? But what about my enthralling butt cheeks?”

  I playfully slapped his arm. “I’m serious. I have a salsa class to go to. I’ll um …I’ll see you around,” I said and gestured to the ship. He looked a little hurt but nodded, his smile fading somewhat.

  I ran up to Anthony and his face lit up a little when he saw me. Mercifully, he seemed not to have noticed whom I was talking to.

  “You came after all,” I said. I hadn’t put in nearly enough enthusiasm into that line, and it came across as the admonishment it was. But he nodded anyway and kissed me.

  “Ellie, have you been…?”

  I frowned.

  “Just one, god, yes. But I was desperate. It was just one.”

  His expression was so harsh I recoiled from it.

  “Look, Anthony, if we’re getting snippy with each other, let’s talk about all the whiskey you put away before we came out here.”

  He looked stunned. It was a low blow, I admit. But it was also true.

  We walked on in silence to the room where the salsa class would be held.

  I was the one with the filthy habit, you see, and he was the one who was under stress and needing relaxation. I was undisciplined. Untidy. Forgetful and immature. He was just a grown man enjoying his superior taste in fine spirits. It felt like a constant effort to remind myself that he had flaws too, that despite what he said, I wasn’t so bad. And unlike smoking, Anthony’s drinking hurt more than just him. I tried not to think about all that now. We were on vacation. He wouldn’t do anything, not with the walls as thin as they were and not with people to see any black eyes in the morning…

  And so that was my evening. Anthony actually decided to come out and live a little just like I had wanted. Too bad the thing I felt like I wanted suddenly seemed like the worst thing in the whole world.

  Chapter 3 - Todd

  I’ve spent 20-day hour days running, swimming, and hauling my carcass through combat conditioning that at the time felt worse only for the fact that you got to survive it, sleep 4 hours and then repeat the same thing the next day.

  I can do 37 pushups in a minute and can hold my breath under water for twice the time a normal man can. I can sleep on rocks and wake up ready to load a rifle, rappel down a mountain and disarm anyone I find on the other side. I was in the early stages of conditioning my body to be an all-terrain, all-purpose, finely tuned human machine capable of surviving and thriving in extreme combat situations.

  But holy fuck if I still couldn’t handle my alcohol.

  I groaned and decided not to open my eyes yet. My head wasn’t pounding so much as splitting at the sides where I felt sure my brain was trying to escape me and the abuse I’d put it through. My mouth was dry. I felt hollow inside, and dizzy even though I was lying down. And the burn. Dear god, the burn on my ass.

  I groaned again, peeled open my eyelids and clawed at the bed sheets for support as I tried to raise my head. Even lifting my cheek off the pillow for a second gave me a sickening lurch in my guts so that I was sure I’d throw up if I moved again. I collapsed back down and squeezed my eyes tight. The light felt bright enough to be the sun exploding on my retina, but in all probability, it was only something like late morning, maybe 10:00 AM at most.

  Digging deep, I hauled myself up, blinked hard and scratched the sleep from my eyes. I was in my room, half tangled in bed sheets. I was naked but still had one shoe on. A quick scan of my memory showed that my recollections of the past evening cut out sometime after I went back to the party with the squad.

  I sat up straight.

  The girl.

  Now I remembered.

  I looked down at my soft cock resting in my lap. I scanned the room. Nope. She hadn’t come home with me. I stood and cracked my neck. She had been keen, but not that keen. Still, it was an entertaining thought.

  Then I noticed the bathroom door was shut. I heard the toilet flush and the faint flow of water in the basin. I wracked my brain to think of who could be in there, and just as I was gearing up to imagine it might possibly be her, out stepped Charlie, slamming the door and standing before me in nothing but a white pair of men’s boxer shorts.

  “Fuck. It’s you.”

  “Morning sunshine,” she said. “Got your beauty sleep?”

  She sidled over to the bedside table, scratched around at some things there and plucked up a burnt out joint and a lighter. Then she plopped down next to me, feet spread wide, smile even wider, and got to work lighting it up.

  “Christ, can you not?” I groaned and slumped back down into the blankets.

  The relationship between Charlie and I is kind of hard to explain. In fact, I’d like to not have to call it a ‘relationship’ at all. When she first enlisted with our group, she was one of three women who were all low-key gunning to be the ‘first female SEALS’ and all that shit. Since they ope
ned the whole playing field up last year, a few women had tried but nobody had made it through yet. No biggie. Most men don’t make it through either. Only Charlie seemed to take the whole thing personally, and had made it her full time life’s mission to prove to everyone how wrong they were to think she couldn’t do it. As far as I could tell, nobody hassled her even one bit, but she was always high strung, always looking to finish an argument nobody started, always lippy about something.

  Anyway, we all thought she was gay, truly. The other two certainly were. But after they quit, she was the only one left and then she really went psycho. Don’t get me wrong, Charlie is hardcore. I’d trust her with anything, she’s solid, and I wouldn’t pick a fight with her any day of the week. The rest of the troop felt the same way. But that didn’t mean any of them wanted to risk treating her like a girl and ask her out or something.

  I’m sorry, that’s crude, but you see, things got difficult. Maybe she wanted to show that she was just one of the guys or something. I don’t know why that meant she needed to sexually harass me 24/7, but hey, I’m a big boy, I guess I could take it. Funny thing is, she is kind of hot. Like, I can see it all there. The boxes are more than well ticked, if you know what I mean.

  Through my gritty eyes I peered over at her on the bed and she just sat there, tits out, and you know, she was kind of pretty when she wasn’t going all out with her grating GI Jane bullshit. She had this tight, hard belly and one of those belly buttons that go straight up and down, like a little cut. She had blonde, wiry curls that she always pulled back into tight braids and knotted at the base of her skull, but when she let it loose like this, you could almost forget what an annoying ball-breaker she could be.

  “Want some?” she said and extended the lit stump to me. I groaned.

  “Don’t you ever sleep?”

  She laughed.

  “I’ll sleep when I’m dead, baby.” She took a puff, then killed the stump in a glass on the bedside table and started scrabbling around on the floor.

  “Did you…?”

  “Sleep in here last night? Sure did. That asshole Adam locked me out of my room and since your pansy ass was out cold, I came in here.”

  “Did we…?”

  She snorted as she laughed.

  “Baby, if I decide to take advantage of you in your sleep, you’ll sure as hell know about it.”

  I was not in the mood for this shit. I stood again, clutching the sheets at my groin and staggering over to the mirror to take a look at my roasted backside.

  “So stupid. So, so stupid. How could I be so fucking stupid?” I moaned as I stroked trembling hands over the blistered burn in the shape of an anchor on my butt cheek. It had swollen and now looked more like an upside-down mushroom. It had seemed hilarious the night before. Now the pain and stupidity of it all was sobering me up fast. Charlie tilted her head to ogle me and nodded her approval.

  “Can’t say it’s an improvement, bud.”

  “Charlie? Can you just clear out of my room for a second? I just wanna sleep this off,” I said and tried to fold myself back into my bed.

  She looked a little perturbed, her hip cocked sharply to the side.

  “Look,” she said, a little snippy, “I didn’t come around here looking for you, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know. Whatever, I’m just hung-over as hell.”

  “I’m serious, Todd, you can stop acting like I’m about to corner you any second. Way to dent a girl’s ego.”

  My brain felt like it had been dry roasted, crumbled and poured back into my skull.

  “Relax, would you Charlie? I never said anything.”

  “Your asshole friends are the ones who keep thinking it’s a good idea to set us up, not me.”

  “Ok.”

  “Ok what? You don’t have to be such a bitch about it. You know, any guy on the squad would kill for a chance to fuck the only remaining woman left on this year’s enlisting.”

  I grit my teeth, sat up in bed and gave her a long stare.

  “You know, dating isn’t a martial art, Charlie. I’m allowed to not want to, you know.”

  She rolled her eyes as she threw on a tank top, without a bra underneath. She found her shoes and then turned to leave.

  “I cannot believe I’m having such a dumb conversation,” she muttered.

  I couldn’t either. Like I said, stuff between Charlie and me was weird, to put it mildly. She wasn’t wrong either. There were at least three guys on the team I knew who would drop everything this second to even get a glimpse of those small, fierce little breasts of hers. But that didn’t change anything for me. Maybe I’m not like most guys in this regard, but if it doesn’t feel right, I just don’t do it. And things with Charlie never, ever felt right. Charlie always seemed so angry. Always a little on edge. It would have been a funny thing to admit out loud, but I didn’t like feeling like a conquest to her. I knew we had a history, but that was all a long time ago.

  “Hey, don’t be mad,” I said as she opened the door to leave.

  “I’m not mad, why would I be mad?” she said and looked down at me in bed.

  “Just …I’m just tired OK? I’ll catch up with everyone later. We’ll sit by the pool and stuff.”

  She nodded and silently closed the door. I tried to bury my head into the pillows and sleep again, but it was no use. I stood up, swallowed a painkiller and splashed my face with some cold water. Maybe the abomination on my ass would scab up and heal. These days didn’t they have ways to fix stuff like that, with lasers or something?

  I winced as I peeled on a fresh pair of shorts, then threw on a t-shirt, cracked my knuckles and gave the mess in the room one last look. It wouldn’t look like it to anyone else, but this was my own personal form of luxury at the moment. Once I got started down my military career, order and cleanliness would become the norm. But for now, I was saying a final farewell to my old life and as it happened, that old life came with a lot of mess.

  I rubbed my temple with my fingers and decided on my morning ahead: I’d find the guys, if any of them were awake, and head over for some breakfast and as many cups of fresh black coffee as I could get my hands on. Then I’d swim the rest of the day. That’s it. They had dunked us into enough icy, salty water during our prep phase, and I had swum enough lengths now that I would be content with a little doggy paddle and a nap on a lilo, and I’d fight anyone who had something to say about it.

  I locked up my room and went out for a walk. There couldn’t have been a more perfect day. The air was so clear and blue it almost sparkled and the sun, even though it was still creeping up slowly in the sky, was already bright hot, its rays not hindered by a single cloud. The ship was a beauty, and most people were up and busy, settling beside the pool or taking a swim. I didn’t want Charlie to be mad at me. I got it, really I did. I knew why she had to be tough and all that. What I didn’t understand was why she was trying at all.

  I would never have admitted it to anyone, but for me the Navy was …the last resort. It was my safety net. I knew It was nothing to cry about, but I enlisted months ago because I just didn’t know what else to do. I was tired of thinking. Tired of making decisions. Navy training is hard, no doubt about it. But not as hard as the alternative. I can carry shit and run and fight on barely any food and even less sleep. Frankly, it’s all the other shit that stumps me. The navy was tough, but it was structured. When you were done carrying one load, they always had the next load lined up for you. In any case, Charlie didn’t have to do any of that. Charlie was a woman. She was smart, and she had other options.

  I walked all the way from my room, up a few flights and then onto the uppermost deck so I could get a better view of things. It might have been done up in chrome and gleaming white, but under all that this was a sophisticated ship. I hung over the bars and hoped the sea breeze would wash away my hangover. It was nothing but blue all above and blue all around.

  Then I saw her. Sunbathing next to the pool, blue bikini top above, and blue bikini bottom bel
ow. It was perfect.

  Instantly forgetting my day’s plan and my pounding headache, I walked over to her deck chair and looked down at her, my man-shaped shadow covering her woman-shaped body and causing her to open her eyes and glance up at me. She lifted her sunglasses off her nose and, easy as you please, gave me a bright, sunny smile almost from ear to ear.

  “Why, hello,” she said.

  Fuck. She was hotter than I remembered. I nodded and smiled.

  “Catching some sun?” I asked, and pulled up a chair to sit beside her.

  She pulled her glasses down again.

  “Yup. It’s what I’m here for! Good night last night?”

  Right on cue we both exchanged glances and then started laughing. It was strange how easy it was to laugh with her.

  “Sorry, sorry, I won’t be such a pain in the ass about it,” she said, and lifted her glasses again to give me some side eye.

  “Haha, very funny. If I wasn’t so hung-over I’d have a witty comeback for you, I swear.”

  “And I’m sure I would have been very impressed with it,” she said without skipping a beat.

  I did my best to look at her without looking. After weeks of prep training and slumming it with the gang, her body seemed almost alien to me.

  So soft.

  She had full, round breasts and a soft little circle of fat ringing her deep belly button. Her skin was milky white, its texture reminding me almost exactly of the smooth inside curves of a teacup. Last night she had seemed pretty. Kind of sweet. But now, in her bikini, it was kind of hard to ignore how distractingly feminine she was. She wasn’t overweight, not by a long shot. In fact, in the bright morning sun I could see just how small she really was, how narrow her wrists were and how delicate the little notches in her collarbone. I tore my eyes away and fixed them ahead on the flat, sapphire blue ocean in front of us. I just had to remind myself that not every human female had a drum tight belly and a biceps from doing pull-ups with a two-hundred-pound marine clinging to their feet.