Page 19 of The Villain We Tempt

Nope. My cock gives me the limpest middle finger possible and hides.

This isn’t happening.

A gentleman might still, uh,take care ofCarrie.

But…yeah. No. Also not happening.

Instead, I fake getting a phone call from my brother and get up from the couch to tell him that I’m “on my way”.

I apologize to Carrie, lie and promise a rain check, then dodge her tongue when she tries to shove it down my throat again and send her on her way.

After she’s gone, I groan and slump against the door. My gaze drops to my crotch, and I scowl as I grab the front of my jeans and tug them away from my abs so that I can make eye contact with my dick.

He needs to know how serious this is.

“Thefuckwas that, motherfucker?” I growl at him.

This is, honestly, a first.

He’s never let me down before. And he choosestonight, when I’m walking bow-legged with an epic case of blue balls, to go on strike?

I’d choke him, except he’s got a history of beingrealinto that. So I don't.

Instead, I march over to the bar in the corner and pour myself some Irish whiskey. Then I kick open the French doors to the terrace attached to the third-floor lounge and stalk outside.

A scowl spreads over my face as I lean my elbows on the stone balustrade and glare out over the twinkling Knightsblood campus. I bring the glass to my lips, letting the fiery burn of my Irish roots heat my throat.

“Yo! Kildare!!”

I grimace when I hear my name being yelled from below. A group of underclassmen jocks I half-recognize, a few with their arms slung over girls’ shoulders, are looking up at me with grinning, eager faces.

“Let’s go Privateeeeers!!” another one hollers, toasting me with the beer in his hand, which starts a whole avalanche of other cheers from his buddies and their dates. There’s another round of whoops when one of the girls peels away from her guy and lifts her top, flashing me her bare tits and screaming something about letting her swallow my children.

Classy.

I smile like I’m supposed to. I pump my fist in the air and yell out the pirate-esque “ARGGG!!” that always gets yelled at our games. The group roars it back. Another of the girls screams that she loves me. Then they fade into the night again, laughing and cheering.

I exhale slowly and take another large sip of whiskey.

Like I said: I’m agodon this campus. At the risk of sounding like a completely self-absorbed shithead, every girl wants me, and every guy kinda wants tobeme. I’m fully aware of how outrageously full of myself that sounds, but it’s true.

Now, in the Hollywood version of my life, this is the part where I get introspective and groan about how much I hate being the center of attention. The spotlight is a lie, fame is a fickle mistress, and all those other cliches.

But fuck Hollywood. Idon’thate the limelight.

I fuckinglove it.

And that, class, is how Lochlan Kildare, respectable heir to the Kildare Irish Mafia empire, came to be “The Ghost Prince”: a masked, half-naked MaskTok sensation with close to a million drooling, feverish social media followers.

It started two years ago. My little sister Demi showed me some wack-ass video of a dude in a stitch mask and combat gear with a baseball bat placed suggestively between his legs, saying a ton of cringe shit about “good girls” and “telling daddy what you want him to do to you”.

I know. I say “cringe”, yet I’ve literally said both of those things in dozens of my own videos at this point.

At first, I made fun of Demi, as any big brother would when his little sister shows him TikToks of half-naked tattooed dudes dry humping the camera. But then I noticed that the motherfucker hadfifteen thousandlikes on a video he’d posted not an hour before.

Six thousand comments.

Two hundred and thirty thousand followers.