Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 87943 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87943 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
The stalker spoke a few times, but the voice and words were altered, but somehow the mocking tone still came through. The hand came back twice more, touching Geoffrey, and each time Geoffrey batted it and tried to squirm away. Sven wanted to break that hand. He didn’t care who it was—man or woman—he wanted to snap each one of those fingers as the person screamed for Geoffrey’s forgiveness.
“I don’t remember this.” Geoffrey’s voice was low and hollow.
The hand came back again and the camera angle shifted a little lower to reveal the person tugging at his boxers, revealing sharp hipbones and then the thickening patch of darker blond pubic hair around his soft cock. The Geoffrey on the video whimpered and tried to roll away, but the hand clamped down hard on his hip, forcing him to roll onto his back again.
“No,” Geoffrey whispered, his voice cracking. The phone shook in his hands and the stalker reached over and stroked his soft cock on the screen several times before the video cut off, leaving them to wonder if the bastard had gone even further and Geoffrey didn’t know it.
He’d been molested by someone he didn’t want touching him.
Sven closed his eyes, trying desperately to swallow back the pain and rage. Whether Geoffrey could remember what happened that night or not, the two-minute video had been shared with the world and there was no snatching it back. They could rip it down, but thousands of people had already seen it.
“What the fuck…”
Sven’s eyes returned to the little phone screen to find Geoffrey scrolling through hundreds of comments…and they seemed almost worse than the video. They called him horrible, disgusting names, blaming him or mocking his behavior. Others posted older pictures of Geoffrey, depicting times he’d been out at clubs, partying with friends. Some of them were pictures of him obviously drunk, but so were all the other people in the pictures. It didn’t matter. The pictures, which had been taken in innocent fun at the time, were now twisted into horrid “proof” that he’d asked for it.
“How…how can they think I deserve this?” he whispered, his voice fractured.
“You don’t.” Sven slid his arms around Geoffrey’s chest and waist, pulling him backward. He wanted to pull the smaller man into his chest, tucking him next to his heart to protect him from this pain.
“I said no. I heard it. I said no.”
“You did,” Sven agreed.
Geoffrey flipped back up through the comments, pausing over a couple with names attached that Sven recognized. People who had been at the brunch just a couple of days ago. Their comments had the mask of joking, but there was an underlying sharpness to them. A cruelty that shouldn’t come from someone that Geoffrey had one time called friend.
“I don’t understand. How can they be…be so mean?”
Sven finally snatched the phone out of Geoffrey’s hand and closed the social media app. Geoffrey was just torturing himself, reading their comments over and over again. Sven unplugged his phone and grabbed Geoffrey’s off the counter, plugging it in. Carefully, he turned Geoffrey around and bent down so that he could look him directly in the eye. “Those people are cruel and jealous. They are not your friends. They aren’t worth a fucking tenth of you, do you understand me? What happened is not your fault.”
“But maybe it is.” He gave a little shake of his head. His eyes were unfocused as he stared at some spot that wasn’t even in the kitchen, as if he were trying to relive that night in his mind. “I shouldn’t have drunk so much and I was being reckless. I shouldn’t have…”
Sven’s hands tightened on Geoffrey’s arms and he fought the urge to shake him. “Stop it! This isn’t your fault. You trusted people you thought were your friends and they abandoned you. They betrayed you. One of these fucks hurt you. You’re not to blame. You said no!”
Bright, tear-filled eyes lifted to Sven’s and stared at him for several seconds. Geoffrey’s handsome face was clouded with pain and confusion. “I don’t know. I—”
Whatever he was going to say was cut off by a strange ring from Geoffrey’s phone, different from the one he’d heard other times since moving into his house.
“Finn,” Geoffrey gasped. He jerked out of Sven’s hands and snatched up his phone, but he couldn’t go far. The battery probably just had a tiny bit of juice, just enough to kick on for the call. Sven swallowed back a curse. Of course, Finn followed his brother’s social media accounts. He would have seen the video and all the comments by now.
“No. Finn.…No.…Don’t! There’s no reason.…No, I’m fine. I…” Geoffrey’s broken answers were punctuated by a small, angry voice that Sven could hear in the quiet room. Geoffrey rubbed his forehead and shifted from one foot to the other as he listened to his brother. His shoulders slumped under their weight of his worries. Geoffrey didn’t need to worry about his brother or anything else in that moment.