Kiss the Villain

A masked stranger with a gun turns the hunter into prey

Gareth Carson—genius law student, golden boy, secret sociopath—infiltrates a rival fraternity's masked party with one goal: drug and humiliate Yulian, the Serpents' leader, by staging compromising photos.

A masked stranger with a gun turns the hunter into prey

Gareth Carson—genius law student, golden boy, secret sociopath—infiltrates a rival fraternity's masked party with one goal: drug and humiliate Yulian, the Serpents' leader, by staging compromising photos. He slips a sedative into Yulian's drink, follows his stumbling figure upstairs, and cuts away his shirt with a knife. But the chest beneath reveals a massive snake tattoo that doesn't belong to Yulian. Before Gareth can retreat, a gun barrel presses against his temple. A deep, unfamiliar voice mocks his sloppy exit. The masked stranger has been tracking him all evening, cataloguing every move. Gareth's knife is shot from his hand, grazing his wrist. The stranger forces him to his knees, uses his mouth at gunpoint, and leaves him humiliated, aroused against his will, and consumed with revenge.

Gareth's tormentor walks into his classroom as his new professor

Two days later, Gareth walks into criminal law class nursing a stitched hand, an aching jaw, and a compulsion for revenge that blurs his vision. He's already plotting how to find the stranger and make him suffer. Then the new professor enters and looks directly at him—gray eyes, dead as ash, the same storm-colored stare that watched him choke. Kayden Lockwood introduces himself as their criminal law professor and begins lecturing about justice, punishment, and consent with a straight face. Gareth's pen screeches across his notebook. After class, Kayden keeps him behind and taunts him about their encounter, offering an internship while reminding Gareth that exposing him means exposing himself. Neither can destroy the other without self-immolation, and both know it.

Gareth's weapon gets injected back into his own veins

After weeks of shadowing Kayden's meticulously boring routine—morning swims, hand-ground coffee, forty-five-minute walks to campus—Gareth makes his move. He memorizes the apartment code, waits for the lights to go out, and straddles Kayden's sleeping body with a syringe of a powerful arousal drug. But Kayden wakes mid-injection, flips him over with terrifying speed, and jams the remaining drug into Gareth's neck. What follows shatters Gareth's understanding of himself: tied to the headboard, nipples bitten, his cock stroked with a roughness no one has ever dared, he comes harder than he ever has—against another man's erection. Kayden spits their mixed release into his mouth and calls him a good boy. The praise ignites something Gareth cannot name. He flees the apartment crashing into walls.