Page 157 of A Smile Full of Lies
He leaned in, drinking in my realization like it fueled him.
My breath came in ragged bursts. I swallowed hard, bile and something far hotter rising up my throat.
“You sick fuck?—”
His hand snapped up, fingers gripping my jaw with just enough pressure to hold me still. His smirk deepened.
“Now, that’s not a very nice way to treat a guy who’s making your deepest, darkest dreams come true, is it?”
Heat flooded my cheeks.
No. No, he wasn’t allowed to say that.
Not when I could still feel his fingers brushing over my lips like a phantom touch. Not when my pulse was still pounding, betraying me.
I shoved at his shoulders, writhing beneath him, but it only made it worse. Made it better.
His laugh was slow, satisfied.
“Oh, sweetheart. Keep fighting me. You know I love that.”
I hated him. I hated the way my stomach twisted, the way my skin burned where he touched me.
I hated myself more for liking it.
“Fuck you,” I snarled.
And then… then he said it, and the rest of the puzzle finally clicked into place all at once.
“Not until you ask me nicely,princess.”
The world shattered. My stomach plummeted. That fucking name. That name that only one person had ever called me.
My friend. My confidant. My anonymous escape. The one I had told everything.
Oh, God.
Only StrayDog777 ever called me princess. Had Knox and Stray Dog and Nox Obscura been one and the same this whole goddamn time? Fuck. I’d handed him the playbook to my goddamn fantasies in that anonymous forum, and he’d made them a reality.
My pulse slammed through me, making my whole body shake with the force of it. My lungs refused to pull in air.
It was him. It was all him the whole fucking time. I had been whispering my darkest secrets to him.
And now? I wasn’t going anywhere.
My throat closed, but I forced out the words.
“How long? How deep does this shit go, Knox?”
He didn’t answer right away. Just stared at me like he could peel my skin back and climb inside. Like he already had. His voice was low and shattered like broken glass.
“You let yourself get stabbed to protect me. I warned you that I was going to make you pay for it.”
“Quit dodging my questions. That’s not what I meant, and you fucking know it, Knox. How long have you known about my desire to be hunted? How long have you planned on acting on it?”
His fingers ghosted along my jaw, the touch lazy and indulgent.
“Since your first confession on that anonymous forum… since the first night I DMed you as StrayDog777 and asked how you would want to be caught.”
