Mind Games - A Bad Boy Romance With A Twist

by Gabi Moore

  “Ma’am, no joke, you are the craziest woman I think I ever met,” he said, and we both laughed. But I stopped suddenly and looked at him with a very stern face, stopping him mid-laugh.

  “Pablo, I’m serious about this. I want you to hit me.”

  He groaned and looked out of the window. His gorgeous fat rod sagged a little, realizing its job for the day was done.

  “Ma’am, we already talked about this…”

  “I know, but just say it then, just say you’ll hit me if it weirds you out…”

  “But it weirds me out!” he said, and then got to his feet.

  “Pablo, baby, don’t go.” I felt a headache coming on. And he hadn’t even finished what he started. I was still aching inside.

  “Ma’am, I should really clean the pool,” he said, and he was picking up his bright, palm frond print swimming trunks from the floor, and they looked so out of place in the plush rose gold and neutral opulence that was my bedroom. Or one of my bedrooms.

  “But Pablo, come on Pablo, just listen for a second. You don’t have to do anything. Just call me names again. Pretty please?”

  “Ma’am, no offense, but you really are crazy.” He slinked out of the bedroom.

  “Aw, you really think so?” I shouted after him, smiling.

  Chapter 2 - Todd

  She hadn’t even bothered to get dressed for breakfast. She knew how rare these occasions were, where I could actually spare the time away from work to eat and relax with her, and she turned up looking like …like some kind of whore.

  Natasha was a black hole. Whatever I have, she wants it. She takes everything from me. And then she wants more. I give her everything a girl like her could possibly want, but the hole is just never filled. There’s always something else. She’s never satisfied. And now she turns up at breakfast, hungover, hair looking like shit, smeared mascara on her cheeks. My wife.

  Just goes to show you: a man can succeed at anything he puts his mind to. To a successful man, money is nothing but a game. His darkest demons can be slain so long as he has enough courage and grit. But women? There’s no optimizing women. No fucking solution to that problem. Women are a liability, start to finish. A money sink. A depreciating asset.

  She tells everyone who will listen that she’s actually the opposite of materialistic; a proper little rags-to-riches darling who never cared for all the luxury. But oh, she’ll take the luxury anyway. I guess she cries herself to sleep each night on her silk pillowcases, exhausted from a day of doing fuck all.

  “Had a good night?” I said, and smeared a wedge of butter onto my toast.

  She lifted an eyebrow and gave me a contemptuous look. I’m so fucking sorry, Natty, that you have to endure a life of wasting another person’s hard-earned fortune. That must be hell for you, tell me more. Tell me how hard it is for you.

  “I didn’t have a good night, actually,” she said.

  Bingo. So fucking predictable. The fund was down more than $60 million yesterday and the second investor for the quarter was already making noises about pulling about. And lately I had to deal with Andrew somehow thinking more expensive dinners were needed for the team, and more meetings, instead of focusing on fixing the damn problem, telling the assholes to be happy with whatever reports we damn well sent them and politely asking them all to piss right off.

  But sure, that as nothing compared to the ordeals my poor wife must surely have endured. I would now hear all about how her eyelash curler broke and she couldn’t possibly bear it and it’s all my damn fault, probably.

  “I need to tell you something, Todd. We need to seriously have a real chat,” she said, looking utterly miserable. She hadn’t even touched her toast. We had this spread laid out for us each and every morning and each and every morning the staff would simply whisk it all away again. All the fruit and coffee and juice and crap. All for nothing.

  “A proper chat? I’m not sure that’s wise, over the breakfast table.”

  “Then when?” she said, and her little nose was wet.

  She was a beautiful woman, make no mistake about it. But Christ was she the most exhausting part of any day. Forty-five minutes to waste here having breakfast with her was generous already. But like I said, no gratitude. She just demands more.

  “At a more appropriate time, Natasha” I said. Natasha. My trophy wife. My prize for playing the idiot Olympics, letting my dick think for me right into the world’s most painful and most expensive marriage. Well, it was the last and only time that would ever happen.

  “But when is appropriate? Why isn’t now appropriate?” she whined.

  “Because, Natasha, I’m heading out to work in a little while and now is simply not the time…”

  “But you’re always heading out to work” she said, spiteful.

  I picked up a newspaper and pretended to scour through it. “Now that’s not true. Sometimes I’m coming back from work. And sometimes I’m even at work!”

  She didn’t laugh.

  “Oh for Christ’s sake, Natasha, what is it? Just tell me then, you’re hell-bent on ruining everyone’s morning, so go ahead then.”

  When I first met Natasha, she was a fresh little whirlwind in my life. She was young – really young – and rough and awkward and just pulsing with a raw energy, like she hadn’t quite figured out what to do with it all yet.

  Sometimes, I feel bad about how miserable she is now. About how utterly I’ve failed her. But then I just remember that ultimately she’s nothing more than a common gold digger, and that that sparkle I saw in her pretty blue eyes was never love… it was just tiny dollar signs and I didn’t yet know it.

  Well, that’s another thing I’ll never do again: fall in fucking love like some kind of pleb. Natasha was an expensive mistake, but I was fond of her, for the most part. She started crying. I wasn’t as fond of her when she cried.

  “I miss you…” she said and started sobbing. A tear rolled off and sunk into the toast. It will sound mad to you, perhaps, but the sight of that infuriated me. When she got emotional like this, there was nothing to do but keep calm until it passed. Not all of us can afford to just lose it like that. I started thinking about work.

  “Well, I’m right here now with you, sharing this lovely breakfast with you, and you’re choosing to use this time crying, and making everything unpleasant.”

  “But--”

  “You know how unbelievably busy we’ve been at Black Rock, how hard it’s been for me, and instead of taking this moment to actually connect with me, to support me, you’re choosing to bitch at me about how we don’t connect. Have I understood?”

  “I’m not bitching…” she snuffled.

  Some blondes look good once you’ve roughed them up a bit. In my line of work, believe me, every kind of blonde you can imagine passes through, and some of them were born for that look: primped and preened to a high sheen …and then promptly roughed up a little. ‘Morning after hair’. Some women look amazing that way. Natasha is not one of those women.

  “Then what? What more do you want me to fucking do?” I said, gesturing around at the room. I was there. I was fucking there, wasn’t I? There was cut crystal on the table, silver plated dining ware, expensive crockery she ordered from Milan …this single room in our house alone was bigger than most people’s entire homes in this city.

  “I want you…” she said.

  I laughed. She loved being melodramatic like this. Present an argument when you talk to me. Lay out your case, substantiate your claim and make a fucking argument, is that so hard? It always baffled me that she still thought that whining and acting pathetic like this was an effective way to manipulate me.

  “I want to have …” she said and, unbelievably, I watched another tear disappear into the hot toast. Another one. I thought about work. “I want to have …sex with you. We haven’t in so long.”

  I nearly laughed out loud. It might sound strange, but to look at her you wouldn’t think she’d have any problem saying any number of filthy words.
White-blonde hair, bee-stung lips. She looked as though saying filthy words might well be her line of work, if you catch my drift.

  I mean, it was cute. She was dead cute, don’t get me wrong. I know many men envy me to death that I have a woman that looks like she does on my arm. But turns out crazy is expensive, and only idiots like myself can afford the very best.

  “Well, that’s nice dear, and I want to never have to pay tax again. What’s your point?”

  Ok, maybe that was a bit harsh.

  “Natasha, I didn’t mean that. Just …we’ve spoken about this. If you had any idea of how stressed I am right now, if you really knew what I was going through.”

  “Just fuck me now. On the table,” she said. She had lifted her gaze and was staring straight at me. For a moment, she looked like the same playful girl I had met years ago, the little minx who wore all the wrong things to the races and asked the waiters inappropriate questions about their families and giggled in fancy churches and called imported Seltzer water ‘pop’. There was a distant pang in my gut to see her eyes so naked like that.

  But it was also embarrassing. She was better than this sloppy display of emotion. I raised my eyebrow at her.

  “You have a full seventeen minutes till you have to leave,” she said and started clearing away a place between the crystal and the tiny grapefruit bowls. “And I only need ten.” She smiled up at me and I laughed.

  “Darling, that’s …that’s really cute and all, but …I’ve just showered.”

  “That’s fine, I’m only interested in a very small part of you,” she said and was instantly clamoring over the table towards me.

  “Small?”

  I kissed her but struggled to deflect her greedy little hands rushing all over me. She always knew how to make me laugh. To make me smile. But I couldn’t. Not now. I wasn’t …ready. My head was all in the wrong place, for one, and I was already dressed and it just wasn’t the most appropriate choice. She was in my lap now, hands linked round my neck and kissing me all over.

  “You’re crazy, Mrs. Beckford.”

  “Don’t call me that!” she said and playfully slapped my arm. I was hard. She stared down at my crotch with glee and was immediately grinding on my lap, her disheveled hair flying everywhere.

  Nobody could say she wasn’t an absolutely beautiful woman. But I was constantly amazed at how she could spend so much money and only look cheaper for it. She had colored over her natural blonde hair and now had a brassy looking porn-star cascade that always seemed slightly messed up. Underneath the makeup and the nails and the gaudy jewelry, she was actually rather elegant. But that was only when you looked carefully – on the surface, she was gloriously and ridiculously overdone.

  In hindsight, I guess I had wanted to pluck her out of her poverty and misery and polish her up. My Cinderella project. But there’s no polite way to say it: she had abysmal taste. She looked trashy, to say it impolitely. It was adorable, most of the time.

  But it certainly wasn’t adorable now. I’m not sure why but I was instantly irritated with her, and twisted my head to the side to evade her sloppy kisses. It was just too much. She was too much. I laughed nervously and grabbed her by the shoulders.

  “I have to go to work now,” I said slowly and deliberately. I knew she hated when I spoke to her like a child. But then did she have to act like such a fucking child all the time? She glanced at the clock.

  “No you don’t. You have plenty of time.”

  I pushed her off and stood, dusting crumbs off my suit that weren’t there and straightening a collar that was, I admit, already straight. She always looked even more bedraggled after she was rejected. Her little leopard skin robe gaped at the front and gave generous glimpses of her round breasts in beaded lingerie underneath. Fucking beaded lingerie. A real slut bra. A bra you wore for no good reason. I felt a rush of anger at thinking how much I had paid for it.

  I know. I’m an asshole.

  In case you think I’m one of those sad, emotionally stunted men, think again. Just because I own and manage a disgustingly successful hedge fund, it doesn’t mean I lack all the ‘soft skills’. I just know I don’t have to use them, if I don’t want to. Wealth exempts you, and the first thing it pays for is the privilege of not giving a shit about what others think. Or feel.

  Oh, make no mistake, I have nuanced, complex shades to my inner emotional world …but I have enough self-control and personal mastery not to let it all hang out and embarrass myself.

  “Close your robe, it’s hanging open,” I said to her, gesturing to her tits like they bored me. I am an asshole. Yes, I wanted to make her feel like shit. No, I’m not really sure why.

  Her lower lip quivered and anger flashed over her face. She looked down at herself and then tore off the robe, flinging it aside. When I had first met her, she was stitching cheap sequins onto the neckline of a flimsy thrift store blouse, trying to bluff her way into parties she didn’t belong at. Now, she threw the things I gave her on the ground, bored with them the second she had them. Bitch.

  She stared daggers at me.

  “There! Problem solved,” she spat.

  “Natasha,” I said, calm, “you’re raising your voice.”

  “So fucking what? I’ll raise it I want to,” she said, and flung herself down at the breakfast table again, deliberately displaying herself. On another day, and in another mood, I might have shown her just exactly what happens to women who talk like this to me. She was half my weight and perpetually in heels. I would fuck the daylights out of her if she so much as opened that little mouth at me again. But not today. Today, I had had enough.

  “I’m going to work, Natasha. You can stay here and prance around in your panties if you like, but some of us have work to do.”

  I could almost see the heat coming off her.

  “You know what? You’re a coward, Todd.” She said it as though she had just solved the puzzle and found something that would truly hurt me. If she only knew how much more she’d have to do to even match the punishment I put up with every day.

  “This isn’t a daytime soap, Natasha.”

  “Nobody said it was. You’re a coward because you can’t even face your wife. I’m your wife. I need sex, Todd. There, I said it. You’ll make me beg, because you’re so fucking power hungry, but there, let’s put it out in the open, I need sex.”

  She was crying. I looked down with disinterest at the diamonds nestled between her breasts. At the ridiculous gold and pink beads on her bra.

  “I’m sure you have everything you need,” I said, mockingly. She might be fucking other men. Probably. I didn’t care. But I did want her to think I cared. Let some other guy deal with her shit for a while. Fuck, I’d pay him. She looked pretty defeated.

  “You’re not a real man,” she said and sniffled hard, like a big baby.

  I laughed out loud.

  “Natasha, that shit might have worked on your redneck exes but you’ll have to be a little more sophisticated than that. Try again” I said.

  Her face hardened into a scowl.

  “At least my redneck exes had the balls to actually fuck me once in a while,” she said.

  “Well, I can tell you this, Natasha. You actually have succeeded in insulting me after all. I’m hurt that the best you can muster is childish crap like that,” I said, and bent to examine my reflection in the silver tea pot.

  God, she looked miserable. We always fought like this. Cold and nasty and quick. It always got so nasty, so quick. I couldn’t help myself, once I got started. It was sick, I know, but fuck. Could she just dress nicely for breakfast? We see each other in the mornings like this so rarely, and she can’t even comb her fucking hair?

  She pouted and looked down at the breakfast spread in front of her, then, just like a cat, she pushed her coffee cup off and it went spilling to the ground, sending an ugly brown splatter onto the white carpet beneath. The cup wobbled and rolled on the floor a little and she looked down at it listlessly. It was pathetic.

/>   “Natasha, darling, please…” I leaned towards her. I’m an asshole, I know. I don’t know why we always did this to one another. She raised tearful eyes up to me and searched my face.

  “Natty, just …I’m so busy at work. I need you to not push me, for fuck’s sake. We can spend some time together soon, on the weekend maybe. Ok? We can go on vacation or something. I’m sorry.” My voice was tender. Underneath all the glitter and the polish, she was still my little Natty.

  “Call in at work and tell them you’re not coming in today. Just today. Stay here with me.” She pawed at me a little. My heart broke.

  “You know I can’t,” I said.

  She sniffed and stared down at the coffee cup.

  “I’ll send in someone to clean that up. Natty? I’m sorry Natty. Do you need anything? Before I go?”

  She scoffed quietly under her breath.

  “Ok, I’m off now,” I said and went for the door. She looked so sad and crumpled in her chair. And it was my stupid fucking fault. God must have been having a laugh at my expense. It just goes to show: you can be wealthy beyond most people’s wildest dreams, successful, fit, young and devoted – but you’re never immune from hurting a woman, somehow. No matter what, they’re mad, and it’s your fault. When I finally figure that fucking mystery out, I can sell it and be a rich man for sure.

  “Don’t forget that dinner we have tonight,” I said, on my way out. “Wear that black dress I bought you. It’ll be a classy affair, so be pretty but no need to go over the top,” I said, lingering perhaps a bit too much on ‘classy’. She knew what I was trying to get at. She didn’t look up at me and so I left, closing the door on her. Sealing that part of my life off. The door clicked and I exhaled in the quiet of the hall.

  I walked down the corridors and imagined I could hear her crying. Lifestyles of the rich and famous, ladies and gentlemen. I know you might think this is all fucked up. It is fucked up. But I loved her. If I couldn’t make her happy, then I guess I was stuck with making her miserable, right? At least it was me making her miserable. Fuck, it didn’t make a lot of sense, I know. I’m nothing if not a sensible man but Natasha just …she always knew how to push my buttons.