Mindgasm - A Bad Boy Romance With A Twist (Mind Games Book 3)

by Gabi Moore

  I reached my hand over and touched him, unable to bear the space between us. He left my hand there but didn’t respond to it.

  “When we first met, I had to almost fight you to get to admit to me what you really wanted. And now I’m going to ask you again.”

  “I want you, Dean. I want us to be happy again, I want—”

  “Liar,” he snapped. “Try again.”

  My ears rung.

  “I want…” I paused to find my breath. To find my nerve. “I never want to be ordinary, Dean. I want an exciting life. I want to be thrilled. I want to do so many bad things with your body, things I haven’t been able to admit to you or anyone. I want to keep pushing that boundary, to go further and further and see how far I can go… and I don’t want to pretend. I want you to really hurt me. I want bad things, Dean. Dirty things. I want people to be shocked. I want to shock myself and see if I can handle it,” I said all at once, the words tumbling from my lips.

  “Good. Don’t stop.”

  “I never want to fucking settle down. Ever,” I said, feeling a shred of anger begin to edge my voice. “I don’t care about money or prestige or having brunches with the fucking moms from the neighborhood. I want to be an explorer, and go find new places in my mind, and in yours, and I don’t care if they’re dangerous.”

  “Yes…”

  “I led him to us because some part of me – no, not some part, fucking all of me – wants what that means. I want the fear and the danger and the darkness. I hate that man’s guts and I can’t explain it, but that hate makes me feel alive. What I want doesn’t fit in the civilized world. What I want is illegal. There are some boundaries I’m not allowed to cross, but my God, Dean, there isn’t a day I don’t wake up and fantasize about…”

  He reached over, grabbed my hand and pinned his gaze on me.

  “You’re still not saying it, Nora. You’re still not admitting everything. Say it. Fucking just say what you want.”

  What had begun as butterflies in my stomach now felt like great hulking pterodactyls. I had never spoken any of this out loud, never even allowed myself to think these things, and yet here we was, pressing me on, pressing me to confess to the parts of me that were so dark I had pretended my whole life that they weren’t there. I tried to speak but my voice was choking with the threat of tears.

  “Say it.”

  “I want to kill him,” I whispered, and once I spoke those words an indescribable relief washed through me. I was stunned to hear those words spoken, outside of me now, and how simple they seemed after everything, after all the twisted ways they had haunted me for so long.

  “I want to see him suffer. I want revenge. I want to rub it in his big stupid face and every time I think of it, of how he murdered his own wife in cold blood, it scares me to death but there’s just… there’s something else there. Something I need to do. It’s not that I’m turned on by any of it, it’s more complicated than that.”

  “What if you are turned on by it?” he said. I shot him a hard look.

  “Nora, look, I get it. I understand more than you think. You’re the sweetest, warmest person I know. No question. But you’re also dark. Very dark.”

  “What’s wrong with me, Dean?” I whispered. “Is it some crazy death wish?”

  “No. I just think you got a taste of something strange and now you can never go back again. There were a million women in the world who would have done anything for the life you have now – luxury, safety – but maybe I chose you because I knew that none of that was really what you were after.”

  “So what am I after?”

  “Fuck, Nora, I don’t know. I’m no shrink. But you’re my wife. In sickness and in health, right? And as sick as this gets, I’m here for you,” he said and gave me a wry smile.

  “We’re so fucked up,” I groaned and gave him a playful slap on the knee.

  “Who’s we?” he said and I couldn’t resist a smile. Even my worst self, even my craziest, most secretive, most inexcusable self had barely made a dent to that warmth in his eyes as he looked at me.

  “I love you, Dean”

  He squeezed my knee.

  “I have more questions, though.”

  “Fire away.”

  “Do you want to end this relationship?”

  “Never.”

  “Do you want to kill me?” he said, and I giggled and slapped him again.

  “Be serious.”

  “I am.”

  “Of course not. Well, maybe if you keep asking me questions like that.”

  “Have you ever lied to me about anything else?”

  My cheeks burned.

  “Yes. One time… we made love once and I—”

  “Don’t worry about that. I already know,” he said, cutting me off.

  I stared slack jawed at him.

  “Well then, I guess that’s that. My whole secret shame, laid bare,” I said, taken aback by how surreal the moment felt.

  “Are you kidding? That’s tame. You should see some of the men I do business with,” he said and gave me a cautious smile. “Now, let’s focus here. We’re in the middle of nowhere, again, and my father is after us, again, but this time we’re not running anymore. Jeff Cane is a formidable enemy, Nora, I don’t have to explain that to you.”

  “It would be self-defense,” I said simply.

  Our eyes met.

  I was feeling stronger already.

  “Nora. You really want to go ahead with this?”

  My throat was dry. I nodded.

  He pursed his lips and stared out the window.

  “Ok. Then we need to leave. I’m not willing to put these innocent people’s lives at risk. You have a plan?”

  “I’m beginning to think so,” I said, feeling like my voice belonged to someone else.

  “Good. We should leave. This storm will make it harder for him to follow. I take it you still want the thrill of the chase, right?” he said and lifted an eyebrow at me.

  “Naturally.”

  Mistress Morgan was emerging again, but this time it was no act. I needed no props anymore, no scripts. This time I really felt it, really fucking felt in the marrow of my bones that I was a dark, supremely powerful woman hell-bent on perfect domination, on the complete subjugation of her enemies, on a game of annihilation to end all games. The fantasies that had crawled hidden in the darkness of my mind for years melted and morphed into one sinewy beast, one giant thing that now grabbed my safe, sane little life in its teeth and mauled it. The lines blurred and scattered away. The story and the storyteller became one. Something dangerous and delicious inside me clicked, like an awful limb popping back into its socket.

  I stared out the window, which was still being pummeled by the rain outside. In my mind, Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain blared at high volume; in my fingertips, the feeling of electricity; on my lips, something like a half smile, half snarl.

  “Nora. My love. It’s time to go,” he said and reached out to stroke the back of his knuckles against my cheek.

  “Not yet,” I said, took his hand and placed it between my legs.

  Chapter 8 - Dean

  Is this how it feels to be the bad guy in the story? Is this how it happens? You see people far out on the edges of human experience and they seem so normal, and you wonder, how did you get there? How did you go from normal like the rest of us to …that?

  Leaving behind the bewildered Bolivian woman and the small boy clutching at her skirts, Nora and I set off again, into the heart of the storm. The rain beat down so violently on the roof of the car we couldn’t hear one another even if we shouted, so we exchanged weighty glances at one another and drove off, my still-trembling hand on her thigh, as though to reassure myself that she was still there.

  The roads became rivers. It was madness. But it was, as Nora said, a madness that both of us seemed unable to resist anymore. Were we evil? Just stupid? I didn’t know. I can’t really describe to you how beautiful she looked at that moment, with the blue light fro
m outside hitting her cheekbones in that otherworldly way, the darkness in the evening sky nothing compared to the black in her eyes. I wish I could describe properly to you what this woman did to me, and why I was so powerless to resist it. I wish you could see it now with me, could feel the raw devotion I felt for her in that moment, our strange new lives unfolding before us like something of biblical proportions, something on a scale that scared even me.

  I drove slowly and carefully, not knowing where I was really going anymore. Navigating the treacherous roads was not as absorbing as the task of trying to think straight, to lay down my million thoughts in a line and look at them plainly. She was right. It would be self-defense. We had fled the country and he had followed us. He was a convicted murderer who had already been dragged through the public eye as a man capable of unthinkable corruption and violence. He had made an attempt on our lives once before. And he was currently a fugitive, for fucks’ sake. It was hard to think of a man more deserving of justice.

  I looked over at her in the passenger seat. Once, we had driven like this in the wide open sun, drunk with love for one another. I looked back out at the roads, being washed away in a deluge even as we drove on them. Peals of water lashed down over us, but we drove on.

  No, not evil.

  Not Nora.

  Right then she felt more to me like Lady Justice herself, doing something I was ashamed to admit I had failed to do so many times myself: take charge. A few short years ago I was a different man. I was cocky; adamant that I hated everything my father stood for. And yet, hadn’t I become just like him? Wasn’t Nora’s mission to face this monster head on more honest than the decade of semi-crooked business I’d engaged in back in California?

  She said she was bored with the life we made. Bored with the neighborhood moms and the bland ease and the pretty little role I plonked her down in, a role I thought we both wanted. But maybe I was bored too. Maybe I wasn’t any different and I had chosen the least housewifey woman in the world for a reason: because I knew she’d never let me get too comfortable. Now, we were busy with the scariest roleplay of our married life, and Nora was the avenging angel in a summer skirt and a look in her eyes that could make small children cry. It would be the role of her life, I was sure of it.

  “Watch out!” she cried, and I spun the wheel and brought the car skidding to the left to avoid a massive tree trunk, floating right down the center of the road like a miniature ship, complete with leafy sails whipping in the wind.

  “Was that—?”

  “A fucking tree,” I muttered, and carefully pulled the car back onto what could have been the road. I then guided us again up and through those black cords of water gushing down the road. I had never seen so much rain in all my life.

  “Where are you going?” she yelled, her knuckles white as she gripped the door handle and tried to steady herself as we bumped along over the rocks and debris.

  “We can’t stay on the roads anymore. We need to get higher up.”

  Night had fully fallen and there was no lighting to speak of – only the two weak beams of the car’s headlights illuminating the great tumult of leaves and bark and endless water rushing past us at a speed. I hadn’t expected this much water. I was sure it was lapping well over the car tires, and with each thump over a hidden jagged rock, the water sloshed high up enough to splash onto the side windows.

  Nora perched on the edge of her seat and with wide eyes watched the flood unfold around us. All at once she yanked her legs up onto the seat and threw me an alarmed look.

  “Water!” she cried and I looked down to see an inch of rain water sloshing round the floor of the car. I dropped a gear and picked up the speed, tilting us both backwards into our seats. By some miracle, I hauled that groaning vehicle up onto what looked like a relatively dry rocky ledge. Though I couldn’t properly make it out, it felt as though we were skimming the shielded edge of a steep hill, allowing the flood of water to surge down and past us below.

  Soon we were held at least a yard above the rolling river beneath us that had only a few moments ago been a road. I had no idea how long we had here or how much higher the water would rise, but I knew we had to keep the car running and out of the water for as long as possible. It couldn’t rain forever.

  I don’t mean to paint the situation in the wrong light, though. Inside the car, the rain thrumming mercilessly all around us, my mind became quiet and calm. The task ahead was obvious and I knew what needed to be done. My focus narrowed onto that spot and though my shoulders hurt from being thrown around inside, and though I was aware on some level of being filled with adrenaline, there was a grace to the whole situation, an ease. It thrilled me to the core. Eventually I managed to drag the car up a little higher and left us idling there for a moment, while I glanced around to gather our bearings. For the time being, we were safe.

  Why do people do extreme sports? Why do people get painful tattoos or run grueling marathons? I wondered if it was for the unspeakable sweetness of that moment as we sat together, the moment when it was over, and we got to rest and breathe as survivors, maybe even heroes. How perfect ordinary life seemed now, on the other side of the extraordinary. How wonderful to rest for a second and feel the joy of being alive, and how strange to feel it only when that very life was being threatened.

  I looked down and realized she had reached over to touch me. I glanced at her, then back down at the hand, which was now snaking towards my crotch.

  Fuck yes.

  I lunged at her and kissed her hard, grabbing ardently at her hair, pulling her closer into me, plunging my tongue into her sweet little mouth. We kissed hungrily like this for an eternity, and the more I kissed, the more I needed to, the more I was sure there was some part of her I hadn’t tasted yet, and if only I could pull her closer in.

  “I love you, Dean… I love you, Dean,” she whispered against my lips, like a mad woman, and when I saw her eyelids flutter half closed, I kissed these too, then kissed her wet cheeks, and her jaw, and down onto the cool smooth skin of her neck

  “What’s that?”

  Even through eyes squeezed shut, I could make out the faint golden sparkle of light approaching. We both spun around and looked behind us, gawping at what seemed to be a single beam bouncing towards us through the darkness, disappearing for a moment behind a swell of water, then reappearing again.

  “Someone’s coming,” she said. Someone indeed.

  I pulled away from her and twisted around to follow the ascent of the car, which I soon realized wasn’t a car at all.

  “A scooter. Someone’s coming up here.”

  We could do nothing but look on mutely. A million thoughts flashed through my mind, all of them cut short when the silhouette on the scooter became clear – a man, bouncing on the seat with both legs outstretched to steady his ride. He didn’t much look like the grim reaper, but it felt like fate himself had come to fetch us and wreck our plans. I grabbed the ignition key and readied myself to pull off again, but Nora’s hand was soon on my shoulder.

  “Let him come,” she said. The rain was easing up a little, but the flood of water already under us seemed fuller than ever. I had no idea how long the mud under us would hold before we ended up being slid downstream just like the tree we had seen a while back. But if Nora wanted to stay, we would stay.

  The scooter, still veiled by the sheets of silvery rain pouring down, slowed a little as the driver appeared to be thinking about his options for tackling the incline. I turned to see Nora scrambling for her little bag, filled with the unlikely weapon that she had brought with her. I had to fight the lure of stepping in to take it from her, to protect her and pluck those hard, dark thoughts from her mind once and for all… but I knew she needed this. If Nora needed me to be here while she faced her demons, then that’s what I would do.

  The scooter couldn’t cross through the thick band of water separating us, which had now grown even wider since we perched ourselves on the mountain edge. When the figure stepped off the seat, I
watched in awe as the scooter buckled under and tumbled away down the river, like it was almost never there. The figure left standing watched it go, and then spread his legs wide to squat down against the heavy current, to prevent the same fate for himself.

  Was it my father? Could I know it was him for sure, from the way he moved through that wall of water? Did I know him well enough to say that the wild flailing he made of his arms as he tried to find his balance was something I’d recognize?

  Click.

  I spun to see Nora holding the gun in her hand. I asked her a million questions with my eyes, none of which she answered. I nodded. The look in her eyes was the only solid thing in the rolling landscape around us, the only thing I trusted. I won’t tell you that this was the apex moment of my life. I don’t want you to think I’m being dramatic. But as that figure slowly bumbled a little closer, one halting step at a time, I couldn’t resist the feeling that the big Event of my life was happening, and even if I wanted to stop it, it was rolling ahead now in the wheels of fate, out of my hands.

  A clap of thunder startled the figure who wobbled a little, dipped under the water and then burst out again, arms flailing. He looked like he was made of the black water itself, drenched and just barely fighting off the flood. Would the river carry him away before Nora had her way with him?

  But no, he kept on approaching us. When he was only a few yards away, Nora found her way onto my lap and was now at the window, both hands pressed up to the glass, watching his every staggering move, the weapon at her knees. Upstream a massive crack brought all three of our heads spinning to watch as a large tree branch came hurtling down the river. The figure leapt back to avoid being hit, but in doing so lost his balance and tumbled forward, getting closer towards us but slipping a good few yards down the stream before scrambling for his feet again.

  “He’s drowning,” she whispered.

  She was right. But he still stood, fighting off the water, coming for us. In no time he had reached within an arm’s length of the door, and was grasping up at us like a man on a cliff edge, his fingertips sliding again and again off the slick metal but failing to secure a hold on the car.