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

by Gabi Moore

  I took another drag and set the pipe aside. This time, the smoke plumes snaked into my brain, and loosened things up a little there. It wasn’t her job to come back. I didn’t deserve her anyway. If they all leave, well, maybe there’s a reason for that…?

  My ears pricked instantly to a faint rustle in the distance. Someone was approaching. I had picked this damn spot specifically because it was difficult to get to. Because I didn’t want to be bothered. Because no, I didn’t have a special cure for your granny’s arthritis and no, I didn’t want to make a trade.

  I turned my focus to the oncoming rustle. To my surprise, a familiar but out-of-place figure appeared at the threshold. She stood for a moment, great bosom heaving in the heat, looked at me and then ambled her way up the path without a word. I watched her approach, and when she said nothing, I scooted over and made a place for her on the narrow porch. Mama Tembi is what the locals affectionately call “traditionally built”. I felt the weight of the entire building sag a little as she settled herself beside me, dangling her feet off the edge.

  I offered her the pipe, and she took it. Wordlessly, I tamped in some herbs and lit it for her, and she drew a long, graceful puff for herself. At the apex of her inhale she coughed a little and looked with disgust at the pipe, then handed it back to me.

  “You’re drying it in the sun. It needs to dry in the dark,” she said to me, matter-of-factly. Like I said, Mama Tembi knew everyone and everything. I’m not a man built for shame, but she was right, and I withered under her judgment, and the thought that I had prepared my herbs incorrectly.

  I said nothing and waited for her to speak.

  “It’s a pity that your father couldn’t teach you more, before he died.”

  For a moment, the leaves and branches at least looked like leaves and branches.

  “I told him, when he was sick, I told him, don’t worry, Vik is in good hands. Because you were. Everyone in this village is my child, you know. But you are also my child. I knew your mother, Vik.”

  Once every couple of months, Mama Tembi would have a come-to-Jesus talk with me. She respected that I was on my own path, but she never doubted for a second that that path would necessarily lead back into Mchinji, into a life that was good and decent and normal. And I’d wear pants and marry a nice girl and stop my nonsense. In Mama Tembi’s eyes, this rough little cabin didn’t nearly count as “good hands”. We were all her baby chicks, and concerned mother hen she was, she didn’t like one of her own wandering too far from the nest.

  Penny’s face had vanished completely. I relaxed a little.

  “I have to speak my heart, Viktor,” she said, holding a clenched fist to her chest. This was serious. She never used my full name. I looked at her, and her face seemed strange.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “That baby girl. Penelope. She’s...” she said though choked sobs.

  I was irritated.

  “Mama, she’s not a baby, she’s an adult, what she does with her life is her own business, and what I do with my life is also my own business…”

  She shook her head violently.

  “No, Viktor, stop saying that. Everything we do affects others, everything, how can you be so…”

  She stopped mid-sentence. My face grew hot. I knew that there were rumors. I knew that people disapproved of me, skulking around in the forest on the periphery, snaring an occasional missionary girl if one wondered by, like a jackal. I loved Mama Tembi, but she didn’t get to come here and tell me wat I should do. Nobody did. I stood up and made as if to usher her off the ledge. I wanted her to go.

  “Are you still running around with Valerie?” she said. I didn’t see what Valerie had to do with anything.

  “Whether I ‘run around’ with someone is nobody’s business but mine,” I said, curt.

  “Viktor, when your mother…”

  “My mother doesn’t have anything to do with it either. I don’t see her anywhere, do you?”

  “And Penelope? What about her fiancé at home? You don’t even care?”

  “Mama, you said you wanted to speak your heart, so do it. Say what you want to say.”

  Her eyes were wounded.

  “Viktor, she’s pregnant,” she said quietly, then clutched both my hands in hers.

  Instantly, her face was everywhere again. Penny was all around me. Her eyes were in the wood swirls of the cabin, in the clouds, in the shapes on Mama Tembi’s shirt.

  There had to be some mistake. I had given Penny a huge handful of medicine to take with her, to prevent pregnancy. It was a pouch of silphium and stoneseed root, and a mix of other potent herbs, and I had been making the same blend for the women in the village for years, and they swore by it. It always worked.

  “There must be some mistake,” I said.

  “I know it when I see it!” she yelled.

  “Wait, when you see it? So you don’t know this for sure? What does she say?”

  “She’s American, what does she know? It will take her till Christmas to figure it out…”

  I angrily pulled my hands from hers. My mind raced. I hadn’t spoken to her again since she stormed off on that horrible morning, and I hadn’t the heart to chase after her. I had quietly hoped she would have sprung some sense and just gone back home already. She didn’t belong here, anyway. Not really. She needed to be at home, with her asshole fiancé, who at least could offer her something normal, something legitimate.

  I had to find her. I went to fetch my shoes and angrily lashed the laces round my ankles.

  “Where are you going?” Mama Tembi said. She still held the pipe in her hands. I raced over to her and clasped her shoulders.

  “Thank you for coming to me with this Mama” I said and ran off.

  “Vik! Wait!”

  “Yes?” I said and paused at the shed.

  “She’s not going anywhere, Vik. You don’t have to rush.”

  For a while we stared at one another. I could sense a double meaning in her words. I ran off. In just a few words she had unraveled my exact dilemma. I didn’t want her to leave. Of course. I didn’t want her to go back home to her asshole boyfriend and I would have given anything in the world to have her sweet head in my lap just one more time. Her leaving me would be the worst possible outcome.

  Except for one other possible outcome: her staying.

  Chapter 22 - Penelope

  Walking in the bush calmed me. It’s easy: one step, then the other. One step, the other. I liked my shoes. They were simple and strong and didn’t mind taking me far. I hadn’t been called a “goody two shoes” in quite some time. In fact, the whole idea seemed so distant to me now, like something that belonged to someone else who lived in a distant era in history. Not to me.

  I had committed adultery. I had taken illegal substances. I had fraternized with a man known to have regular run-ins with the law. But even still, I felt my moral compass pricking at me harder than ever: cheating was wrong. No question about that. He had said that Valerie was just his friend. He had promised me. And he had lied.

  And he could act like he was some fancy forest-guru all he liked, but he was just a garden variety, flawed human being like the rest of us, and a coward, and a fucking liar. I still hadn’t decided what exactly I would say to him when I saw his sorry face, but I still had a long way to walk, and plenty of rage to carefully spin into the perfect speech as I did so. As my feet went, one over the other, swiftly through the underbrush, my brain worked and I hashed out everything I wanted to tell him.

  That he had abused my trust. That he wasn’t some cool revolutionary for hiding out in a tree house in the woods, he was just afraid. Afraid of people and of me. He was all about how he hated to see bullshit in other people, well, I would news for him: his bullshit was just as bad as everyone else’s. And though he would never admit it, the way he dried his stupid herbs was completely wrong!

  And I didn’t care anyway. He was fun, sure, but I had long ago moved on. He had shown me what an idiot I was to thi
nk about marrying a man like Dylan. But he was no better. I didn’t know what I wanted anymore, but it wasn’t him, and I wanted to make damn sure he understood that not only wasn’t I hurt by his betrayal, I actually pitied him for it, and no, I wouldn’t even consider forgiving him for a damn thing.

  My feet moved quickly in the brush. I was walking quickly, a brisk, angry pace that had me break a slight sweat. I recognized all the old plants as I passed them. Old friends in the form of narrow, golden grasses or thorny leaves or little white star shaped flowers with dusty neon yellow stamens inside.

  While I was at it, I was thinking of scrapping the garden completely, too. We needed to grow a crop that was actually worth something. I was done heaving and sweating to raise mediocre crops, and the soil was just too depleted for anything – even the maize had been lackluster.

  And I would return back home just as soon as I damn well pleased, thank you very much.

  As I made my way, I heard my skirts rustling over the grass. By now, most of my old wardrobe from back home was either ruined, given away or just gone. I had a growing collection of sarongs and fishtail dresses. And a new way to fold my head wrap: not like the local women did, but in my own fashion: with a broad strip wrapped across like an extravagant Alice band, knotted at the top, off to the side, like a 50s housewife who had gotten lost and landed up in Africa somehow.

  Which is kind of what I was.

  I started to feel better. The right words for what I wanted to tell him hadn’t appeared to me yet, but I knew how I felt, and that seemed like enough for now. I still had a long way to go. Light footed, I skipped towards his house, the feet familiar with the old route. Then I saw him and froze.

  He was standing on the swell of the hill, just standing and watching me approach. I stopped too. His form was unmistakable. I would know those strong shoulders, that cocky, upright posture anywhere, and from any distance away. I realized that he was coming to see me. Our path was the same path.

  Suddenly, all the anger, my whole silly speech …it all just fell away and my mind went blank. And into that blankness rushed all the memories of him. His crystalline eyes. His hard, warm arms around me. The way his fingers were so strong around an axe, but so gentle around the stem of a flower. With a deep, hurting ache I realized I would have given anything to just stop walking, and to just curl up in his lap and let him stroke me to sleep. I hated him. But I watched his form, looking for a sign, any sign that he felt the same.

  He took a tentative step towards me, extending his long neck to see me more clearly in the grass. Even from so far away, I knew the expression he had on. I knew all his expressions. I made a move toward him too. Soon, we were walking towards one another again. My heart was pounding madly in my throat, but the blood fell from my face. My hands found a passing stem and I yanked it from the soil and took it with me, twisting it nervously as we approached one another.

  “Hello,” he said, when all the distance was gone, and we were two feet from one another.

  “Hello.”

  “Nice headband,” he said and I did a weird, dismissive shrug. This was already going completely different to what I had imagined.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I had no idea where that came from.

  “No, I’m the one that should apologize.”

  He looked so damn good. He had such a beautiful body. Every last inch of him was masculine. Everything was hard and tight with purpose. Nothing on him was by accident. Not a shred of him was wasted.

  “I have something to tell you,” I said. He didn’t seem surprised. His eyes were soft as he looked at me.

  “I know you’ve been seeing Valerie all this time” I breathed, and it was like getting poison out of my system, to just finally say the words, and give them to him, so I didn’t have to carry them anymore.

  He went white.

  “What…?” he sputtered. He looked genuinely surprised.

  “I know that she comes and sees you. And I wanted to tell you that you’re wrong.”

  He looked like he was having a hard time forming words. He searched my face and seemed crestfallen, and all of a sudden a flash of irritation came over him. He rubbed a hand over his face and swore under his breath.

  “I’m sorry, Penny…” he started but I cut him short.

  “’Sorry’ doesn’t mean a damn thing. Don’t apologize. Just own it. You did it, and it was wrong” I said, staring hard at him.

  “But…” his eyes darted from me to the ground and back again.

  “Ah fuck, Penny. Why did you have to come here at all? This is who I am. This is me, I’m fucking sorry. Go home and marry your boyfriend, if you want a pet to put in a cage…”

  I laughed out loud.

  “Don’t give me that bullshit! What you did was wrong.” I said, somehow finding strength from the earth beneath me.

  “I never agreed to anything with you, and you knew that right from the…”

  “You’re wrong Vik! Just admit it.”

  He glowered at me.

  “Oh, now we’re going to talk morality, are we?" I’m wrong, yes, fine. I made a huge mistake. But I’m not the one who came all the way out here looking for trouble, just begging for a reason not to go back…”

  “I told you, I might still go back,” I said quietly.

  “Might?!”

  I sat down on the grass and rubbed my face. I was getting tired of this.

  “Why Valerie though? You both have nothing in common, I just don’t get it…”

  He sat next to me, but not too close.

  “I know. That’s kind of the point.”

  “What do you mean?’

  “I don’t fucking know. Valerie’s easy. I know what to expect from her. She doesn’t demand anything from me, in fact, she’s kind of shallow in her own way and she…”

  “Are you saying I demand things of you?”

  “Well, yes! Yes, you do actually. And I love it. You don’t just take my word for it, Penny. You push me. You’re not afraid to… I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore. I’m sorry. That’s all. I’m sorry.”

  The grass rustled peacefully beside us. What a mess. I was tired. So, so tired. I wanted to hate him, but I just couldn’t summon the energy. A few months ago, he had seemed to me the biggest, scariest person in the world, made of steel and iron and hardwood, and I couldn’t believe he had taken notice of me. But now I saw him there, sitting in the grass with me, and I realized just how lonely he was. How scary I must have seemed to him.

  “I think I should leave Mchinji for a while. I need to clear my head,” he said at last.

  I said nothing.

  Somehow, our bodies found their way to one another again, and I was in his arms, in a heartbeat. I kissed him hard and deep, and he held me firmly in his arms, cradling my head and pouring down wordless kisses caresses over me. Without thinking, I surrendered to him and soon my arms were moving swiftly over his hips, slipping underneath the familiar folds of his sarong, while he pulled at mine and we tore away at them, matching up our nakedness, pressing bare skin to bare skin. It all happened so quickly. I was soon perched on his lap, naked under my brilliantly colored sarong, fanned out over us both. With ease he entered me, his hard cock towering straight up so that it pierced my body the moment I leaned into him. I exhaled and settled my weight down onto him, and his strong thighs tightened and he began to thrust into me.

  I cried out and in return he closed frantic teeth round the skin on my neck and shoulders. I realized I was sobbing. His rough hands on my hips, he bobbed me up and down in his lap, guiding my tired body over his form, slapping with each time he brought me down onto his lap and then up again. I wrapped my arms round him and buried my face in his neck.

  “Vik …Vik …” I said. “Vik, I love you.”

  “I love you too,” he breathed.

  “I love you, but I have to go now …I don’t want to do this anymore…” I cried and, wiping the tears from my face with the back of my hand, I tried to stand up.
<
br />   Violently, he clasped my waist and pulled me down again.

  “Don’t go. Penelope, please don’t go.”

  I tried again, but he easily overpowered me, fucking me even harder still. I squirmed and began to strike at his chest. He knew how quickly he could make me come. He knew just what to do, and where, and how, and soon I came shuddering down, my body twitching and gasping. His face softened as he looked up at me.

  “Don’t go Penelope…”

  I slapped his face, hard, just once. I untangled myself from him and walked off. I didn’t need to look behind me to know that he lay kneeling in the grass, shattered. I retied a tight, thick knot round my waist and rearranged the folds of my sarong. Sometimes bad can be good. Sometimes good can be bad. And sometimes, a thing can be neither. I had learnt everything I could from Vik, and now I was done with him.

  With every step I took away from him, I felt stronger.

  Chapter 23 - Penelope

  I made my way to the café. It was one of those hot, unbearably humid days, the kind of day where people’s tempers flare just a little higher than usual. Mama had been short with me in general these days, but when she sent one of the kids to come and fetch me because ‘someone special wanted to talk with me’, I knew something was up.

  I walked tall in the midday heat. He could just go to hell if he thought he had any chance of “talking” with me. I planned on saying nothing. Letting him squirm a little as it dawns on him that I want nothing more to do with him, or his stupid cabin, or his dumb plants. Besides, as it turns out, I can grow my own plants. I had devoted two small sections of the maize plot to my own experiments, and now had tea and garlic and small fruit trees growing like they were magical. And I didn’t need his damn help to do any of it.

  I stepped into the café and scanned for Mama Tembi. She was behind the counter, big bosoms resting on the counter, rolling cigarettes with a new automatic roller I had bought for her. She lifted her head to look at me, but her face was unhappy. I was about to greet her when I saw him out the corner of my eye.