Page 11 of A Smile Full of Lies (Secrets of Stonewood #1)

Chapter

Eight

ROS

I hadn’t stopped shaking since I shut my laptop.

My heart was still skipping every third beat. My thighs wouldn’t stop clenching. And my head was a fucking mess.

I hadn’t even meant to open the damn anonymous forum this morning. I just… couldn’t help myself. After last night, after everything I’d typed, everything I’d confessed, I thought maybe it would help to see it again. Like rereading a journal. Like poking at the bruise to make sure it still hurt.

But it wasn’t just last night. This morning had been worse. That message. That fucking message. It was burned into my brain now.

If I were someone you knew…

…if I had a familiar body, hands you’ve seen before, and a voice you know… if I were there… would you let me chase you?

I couldn’t stop hearing it in my head. Worse than that, I couldn’t stop imagining the voice that might’ve said it if it were said aloud instead of just words typed out on a screen — low, smooth, dark with intent. The kind that didn’t ask to borrow. The kind that took .

I dragged a pillow into my lap and pressed my forehead into it, groaning as if I could smother the mortifying heat in my cheeks that way.

It didn’t work. Nothing did. Not the cold shower I got up and took. Not the banana I forced myself to eat afterward. Not the double-strength coffee I brewed and left untouched on the counter while I paced the living room like a restless ghost.

I didn’t even remember sitting back down, but here I was, cross-legged on the couch, laptop open again, glaring at the login screen for the same forum that had just unraveled me.

I hadn’t been this curious about something in years. I typed in my info, hit enter, and held my breath. Then I stared at the empty search bar like it was a landmine.

MaskTok. That’s what StrayDog777 had called it. A specific corner of the internet. Primal. Safe. Controlled.

“Some people say it makes them feel scared and safe at the same time,” he — or maybe she, for all I fucking knew — had said.

That was the part that had stuck with me. The contradiction.

Scared and safe. Pinned and wanted. Chased and chosen.

I couldn’t tell if it was healthy or if it meant I was deeply, fundamentally fucked up. I took a long breath.

Then typed it into the search bar in that same anonymous forum, just to see what would come up. MaskTok.

The search results populated instantly. Content began to load.

The forum was full of threads about it, including links to a certain social media site filled with the kind of videos StrayDog777 had told me about.

Men in black masks. Tactical gear. Voice distorters.

Ring lights. Night vision overlays. Grainy filters and whispers in the dark.

Some were silly. Some were… not.

I watched one where the man in the mask just stared down the camera, breathing slow and deep as if he could smell whoever was watching.

I watched another where the creator stalked the frame with a knife in hand, blood dripping from his fingers in slow, deliberate loops.

Both were tagged with words like fearplay , consentkink , chaseher , and maskeddominance .

It made my throat go dry. It made my thighs twitch.

But it also made me feel like I was intruding on something I didn’t fully understand.

I clicked through a few of the creators’ pinned posts. Some were clearly just playing a role and had the disclaimers to prove it. One said, I’m not your boyfriend, your dom, or your personal kink fantasy. I make immersive content. Consume it with respect.

Another creator had a whole video about parasocial boundaries, warning followers not to confuse thirst trap content with real-life intimacy. That one hit harder than I expected, because I had felt something.

I’d felt a hell of a lot more than I cared to admit while chatting with StrayDog777. I felt guilty for feeling it with the masked men on my screen. The throbbing, bone-deep pulse of recognition in my spine hit like a high I couldn’t explain. It left a fucked-up flutter of want behind my ribs.

It wasn’t personal for them. It couldn’t be. But that didn’t stop my body from reacting like it was. I rubbed my hands over my face and leaned back against the couch.

“I’m not crazy,” I whispered, just to hear the words out loud. “I’m just… wired wrong.”

But even that didn’t feel true because StrayDog777 didn’t think I was wrong. He, or she, or they, or whatever, told me I wasn’t broken.

And worse? I believed them.

God. What was wrong with me?

I glanced down at the app again and clicked on another video. This one was slower. No voice. Just a masked man moving through a forest — boots on wet leaves, breath curling like smoke, movements calculated and predatory.

The caption said: Run. I dare you.

My thighs clenched again. I clicked out of the video fast.

Jesus fucking Christ.

I pulled my knees up and hugged them to my chest, heart thudding like I’d actually been chased.

I wasn’t even aroused anymore… I was rattled.

Because that wasn’t the right video. Not quite. It was close. It hit the same nerves. But something about it felt… too polished. Like the difference between a movie kiss and the kind that steals your breath in real life.

I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I hadn’t found it yet. I closed the app and stared at the black screen for a long moment, and then I whispered it.

“…what the fuck is happening to me?”

I lay there for a long time after I slammed the laptop shut, breathing shallow while my heart tried to hammer its way out of my chest. My thighs pressed together so tight they ached, and all I could do was stare up at the ceiling and try not to scream into my fucking pillow.

What the hell had StrayDog777 done to me?

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I’d used forums like that before, talking to soft-spoken, gentle-voiced anonymous companions meant to ease anxiety or help regulate spirals. They didn’t usually flirt, or provoke. They certainly didn’t… ask things like that.

Would you let me chase you?

My face burned again. I squeezed my eyes shut, willing the phantom voice to leave my head, but it didn’t. It was there, dark and steady, echoing like a secret I wasn’t supposed to hear.

Would you let me help make your dark little fantasies come true?

Fuck.

I turned my face into the pillow and groaned. Loud. Pathetic. Completely feral. Could I just make this all go away? I felt like hiding from myself and the rest of the world, while I was at it.

It didn’t work.

Because now I was picturing hands. A body. A man behind the voice. Not just a phantom, anonymous screen name, a bunch of words on a screen and nothing else.

A real man. Strong. Solid. Dangerous in the way I secretly craved.

I pulled up another video and watched it, and yep… the masked thirst trap thing definitely made me thirsty as fuck. I scrolled through the comments underneath the video, and one jumped out at me.

@BoundaryHammer: If you can’t enjoy MaskTok content without turning the creator into your personal sex object, you’re the problem.

And that was what made my guilt crawl higher.

Because there were real men out there creating masked thirst traps. I knew that. They were content creators. Men who put themselves out there — feral and anonymous and dripping with sex appeal — and some people treated them like nothing more than sex objects for it.

It made me sick. I worried that just by watching… just by my body reacting the way it did in the privacy of my own home, without me ever even interacting with the video beyond viewing it, I somehow crossed a line, that it made me one of the people @BoundaryHammer was talking about.

I sat up slowly, dragging the blanket tighter around my body. Then I tugged my laptop back into my lap, my fingers hesitating on the trackpad.

The anonymous forum window was still open. My gaze strayed back to my DMs with StrayDog777, still open and waiting for me to respond. I didn’t type anything.

Instead, I opened a new tab and typed “MaskTok boundaries” into the search bar.

It was the only way I’d feel okay about this… if I did it right. If I made sure I wasn’t crossing any lines. That I wasn’t treating people like a kink vending machine just because their content turned me on.

Within seconds, I was watching stitched videos from creators — women mostly — talking about the etiquette of MaskTok.

Don’t DM them unless they’ve said it’s okay.

Don’t assume thirst content means consent.

Don’t assume they want to know what you think they taste like.

Don’t be a fucking creep.

The message was loud and clear: MaskTok wasn’t porn. It was theater . It was performance . It was curated intensity, meant to titillate, not invite.

And it was sacred.

I nodded to myself and adjusted my blanket. Okay. Okay. I could do that. I could be respectful. I wouldn’t DM anyone. Wouldn’t comment. Wouldn’t even let my fingers hover over the keyboard.

I’d just watch, scroll, and leave a like when something really made my breath catch.

I could be good. I wanted to be good.

The first few videos I found were… fine. Slick. Intense. Well-lit and well-edited. I saw a few mask types I recognized; classic slasher types, sleek anonymity hoods, stylized horror. Some of the guys were shirtless. Some spoke in altered voices. One had claws.

I flushed watching it, but not because it hit the spot. Because it didn’t.

It stirred something in me, but it wasn’t the thing. It didn’t quite reach the itch I needed scratched. It was too artful. The whole thing was too aware of itself.

I bit my lip and kept scrolling, going deeper down the rabbit hole.

Some creators used night vision. Others set scenes in the woods, the sound of leaves crunching under booted feet sending shivers up my spine. A few whispered.

None of them whispered like I imagined StrayDog777 might . My hand brushed over the laptop keyboard, hovering as I replayed StrayDog777’s words in my mind.

…if I had a familiar body, hands you’ve seen before, and a voice you know… if I were there…