Geoffrey jerked away from Kody’s touch. He had enough slack in the restraints to plant both his hands on the bed and push into a sitting position. His stomach roiled at the quick motion and his head swam. Blinking through the confusion, he looked down at himself to find that he was completely naked.
“You’re so beautiful,” Kody said with an air of reverence like he was faced with a piece of art in a museum. “I wasn’t expecting you to be so beautiful…so perfect.”
“Kody?”
“And now everyone can see how perfect you are. They’ll know that you’re mine.” When Kody spoke, he broadly waved a hand to the foot of the bed where Geoffrey found a phone set up on a tripod as if it were a video camera.
“What are you doing? What’s going on?” His mind was clearing with each passing second, but it was like waking to the worst nightmare. He couldn’t remember how he’d arrived there. He didn’t know where Sven was—Fuck! Sven!
The memory slammed into his brain and he moaned. Sven had been shot with one of those tranq darts. He hadn’t gotten out of the pool yet. Had he drowned?
“Where’s Sven? What the fuck did you do to Sven? If you fucking killed him—”
Kody stood and brutally backhanded him, snapping Geoffrey’s head to the side.
“I hope that giant died! I hope his big, stupid body sank straight to the bottom of your pool and he remains there to rot!”
Geoffrey sat perfectly still, clinging to the words coming out of Kody’s mouth. He didn’t know. He didn’t know for sure what happened to Sven. The bodyguard could have climbed out of the pool before he passed out. He could be safe and on his way at that exact moment to save him.
But he wasn’t going to fucking wait. He was going to escape this nut job and find Sven.
Kody dropped back down onto the edge of the bed and cupped Geoffrey’s cheeks with both hands. He couldn’t stop himself from flinching. He didn’t want this man touching him. It made his skin crawl.
“Oh, baby,” Kody cooed. “I don’t want us to fight. We should never fight. I love you so much.”
Geoffrey tried to turn his head and scoot back out of Kody’s reach, but there was nowhere he could go. “I don’t understand. What’s going on?” he asked carefully. He didn’t want to upset Kody again. It was better to keep him talking, buying him some time while he tried to figure out a way to escape.
“Do you remember that first night we met? At Shiver?”
Geoffrey nodded. “We spent the night talking about coding.”
“Yeah, that’s it. I knew you’d remember. You felt it too. It was magical.”
“Kody—”
“I was going to kill you that night!” Kody jumped off the bed and cackled wildly.
Geoffrey’s heart sped up and he dug his heels into the thin, lumpy mattress, trying to back away, but the restraints kept him in the center of the bed. “What? Why?”
“You ruined me. You and that stupid Matinee app.” His words didn’t match his gleeful tone and he flopped back on the bed. He stretched out along the mattress like they were just having a tender heart-to-heart. “My real name is Nathan McDonald. I created Seeking Romeo. It was going to be huge, but you launched Matinee just a few weeks before we could finish. It blew up.” Kody reached out and gently ran one finger down Geoffrey’s cheek, sending a chill straight to his stomach. “You ruined all my dreams.”
“Kody—Nathan, I had no idea. I—”
“I know, baby,” he whispered. His fingers slid across to press against Geoffrey’s lips, silencing him. “I know you didn’t. I’ll admit that I went a little crazy after that. Fired employees. Threatened them for failing me. Burned down a building…or two. I was even going to kill you that night.”
“I never meant to hurt you…”
“But then I talked with you at Shiver.” Kody/Nathan gave a dreamy kind of sigh and tucked his hand under his head as he stared at Geoffrey. “I never expected you to be so beautiful. It was like seeing Michelangelo’s David come to life. You were so perfect. Your smile. Your laugh. Your beautiful free spirit. You were an untouched angel in the middle of this ugly sea of people.”
Geoffrey bit his lower lip, trying to remain still. What the hell was he supposed to say? Madness lurked in Kody’s wide eyes. Err…Nathan’s. No, he couldn’t think of him as anything other than Kody. It was the only way he’d known him. How had he managed to hide this insanity from him over the past two years? It didn’t seem possible.
“And then you talked to me. Just me!” Kody surged back into a sitting position, getting right into Geoffrey’s face in his excitement. “I couldn’t believe it. Not only were you beautiful, but you were so brilliant too! We talked for hours. It was so perfect.”