Page 23 of A Smile Full of Lies
StrayDog777
I was thinking after our chat last night and wanted to ask you something. Have you ever explored MaskTok? Some people say the content there makes them feel safe and scared at the same time. I think you might like it.
I hit send, then waited.
Josh was still yammering excitedly about Nox Obscura and how that could help pull the kind of numbers they need to make the event profitable on such short notice. He had no idea that the masked man he was raving about was the same man who had watched the aftermath of his family’s death at the hands of monsters in masks, and then slowly became obsessed with them. One day, I was going to find the faceless bastards who murdered my family, and show them what a real monster in a mask could do.
Josh also had no clue I’d been secretly hoping for years that the girl next door would stumble across one of my thirst trap videos. I’d spent years hoping she’d see me and want to be caught.
Josh was still riding the high of the offer from Nox Obscura.
“I’m telling you, this is insane. Between the exclusivity, the location, and now the potential tie-in with Nox Obscura? This thing’s going to explode. I guarantee you if he posts about it, it’ll sell out within 72 hours of tickets going live.”
I forced a thoughtful hum.
“Does the masked thirst trap guy really have that many rabid fans?”
Josh chuckled.
“Yeah, he does. You have no idea what those fans are like. It’ll be great for ticket sales.”
“If he helps ticket sales,” I said dryly, “I’ll allow it.”
“You won’t regret this, I promise,” Josh vowed.
I already didn’t. It was the perfect way to give Ros a taste of what she thought she wanted and see how she actually responded to me making her fantasy come true.
I ended the call and tossed my phone onto the desk. The light outside had shifted, shining bright and sharp through my office window. It was mid-morning, the day aftereverything.
The night she confessed. The night I slipped into her house and stood beside her bed, hand twitching with the urge to touch her.
She didn’t know, she couldn’t. Not yet.
But she’d stayed quiet this morning. No calls. No questions. Just a new log-in to the anonymous forum around 10:21 a.m.
She was probably curious. Still aching. Still thinking about what she’d confessed.
I hated sleeping so far away from her last night, with Mobile Bay stretching out between us, and I was itching to see her again. So, I activated her webcam and mic with a few keystrokes.
Her video feed blinked onto my screen, lips pursed in concentration, fingers curled over the keyboard. A long pause. I dragged the video feed to the right-hand monitor of my triple-screen setup at my work desk, dragged the live feed from the keystroke logger on her laptop to my left-hand screen, and kept the anonymous forum open on my center monitor.
After a couple of minutes, she finally typed out a reply to me in her DMs.
GraveyardGirl93
I can’t fucking believe I said all that last night.
I smiled as the message hit the system.
There it was: guilt, shame, and want tangled up in fear.
Perfect.
StrayDog777
It’s okay to want things. Especially the ones you’re afraid to say out loud.
I opened my external camera feed, and dragged it over to my right-hand screen, too, so I had multiple views of her running on the screen at once.
