Page 158 of A Smile Full of Lies
My stomach hollowed out. The air rushed from my lungs.
“I’m a mod in that forum. I was supposed to ban you.” His voice was all silk and steel. “That was the protocol.”
My whole body locked up.
“But then, I read what you wrote.”
Oh, God.
His grip on my jaw tightened just a little.
“I read,” he continued, softer now, dragging the words out like a caress, “every filthy, desperate confession you poured into that chat with StrayDog777, and I ate it up.”
A broken sound tore from my throat.
Why me?
“I should have kicked you out of the system,” he mused. “But you were too delicious, princess. Too perfect. I couldn’t bring myself to let you go.”
His lips curled into a wicked, sinful smile.
“And you don’t really want me to, do you?”
I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. And then… it got worse.
“You thought the social media algorithm was reading your mind, too, didn’t you?”
His smirk turned razor-sharp.
“It wasn’t the algorithm.”
He leaned in, his voice a whisper against my lips.
“It was me, baby. It was always me.”
My pulse slammed so hard I felt it leaping in my throat.
How the fuck was this my life?
I had been whispering my secrets to him. My confessions. My fantasies.
And the whole time, he had been watching. He had been listening. He had been feeding them back to me.
I had devoured every single one. I had begged the algorithm for more. And he had given me exactly what I wanted.
“I led you straight to my MaskTok videos,” he murmured.
Oh. My. God.
The corner of social media that StrayDog777 had suggested to me when I mentioned my interest in being chased, the perfect account that was exactly what I craved sliding into my For You Page like it had been waiting for me.
Nox Obscura. Him. The masked man in the dim lighting. The one who acted out every filthy scenario I had ever typed into my DMs with StrayDog777 on that anonymous forum in his thirst traps.
The ones I had hyper-fixated on. The ones I had watched over and over and over again.
I’d memorized his hands.
I had let them crawl under my skin, into my head, my dreams… and now they were on me.
