Page 20 of The Villain We Tempt

Ronan made a crack about how much the guy was probably pulling in from ad and product placement revenue. But that’s not what caught my attention.

It was the numbers.

I'll admit it: I am awhorefor attention. I love it. Crave it. Fucking get off on it.

So even though I was already a walking god on campus, drowning in female attention, I sat down like a true fucking addict and planned how I could getmore.

More fawning.

More praise.

More adoration.

I read up on social media branding. I watched other MaskTok content creators and figured out what worked and what didn’t. I realized that I needed some kind of original branding: hence the drippy white painted crown on my mask. I saw the link between MaskTok and the dark romance side of BookTok and themassivefollowing that was waiting out there to thirst over my content and feed me the adoration I craved.

Now, again, my genes gave me an unfair advantage. Sure, there were guys and girls out there who were killing it with “fully covered” content. But when life gives you lemons, i.e., an eight-pack of abs, you make lemonade.

…By which I mean, shirtless MaskTok content.

Within a month, I had two videos go mega-viral and get me thirty thousand followers. By the next month, I was up to a hundred thousand.

The likes poured in. The comments were delightfully unhinged and thirsty. All the attention gave my ego the constant hand job I crave, and I haven’t looked back.

No one knows, of course. I mean, yeah, they know I'm an attention whore. But I’m not blind to exactly how poorly it would go over with, well,everyone, to learn that the future head of the Kildare mafia was out there wearing bizarre combinations of military and fetish gear, telling his adoring fans to be good girls, and stroking knives like a cock on camera.

Please.

So I play it close to the chest. Not even my nearest and dearest know I’m The Ghost Prince.

They would never guess how embarrassingly involved I am not just in the MaskTok world, but the BookTok dark romance world, too. I have to be: tons of my content plays into being the favorite “book boyfriend” of the month and basically cosplaying male main characters from hit dark romance novels.

And that's why I’ve knownexactlywho Velvet Villainess is for a year now.

Not by name, of course. Just as another MaskTok content creator who rose through the ranks even faster than I did. As the blonde with the tight little body she seems to love showing off in leather fetish gear, masked, while she rolls her hips and slides her hands over herself and adds subtitles saying “being a bad girl because you know what happens to bad girls when SIR gets home”.

I mean, it’s as cringe as the shit I post.

It also gets me hard as fucking steel whenever I watch it.

Which is often.

I drain my glass and head inside to top it off. But when I walk back into the lounge, I slump back against the wall next to the balcony. I replay the scene from the library earlier: how I’djust finished packing up my tripod and ring light and was sitting there in the dark ready to check over my latest creation before posting it, when the door had opened.

I’d kept quiet, because, well, come on. I was sitting in the dark in a black mask, shirtless. It would scare the living shit out ofanyonewho walked into that room.

Except it wasn’t just anyone who did.

I’d watched in a little confusion as Galina Nikitin marched in, slid a bag out from behind a chair, and started setting up a tripod and ring light nearly identical to mine. I went perfectly still when she pulled a costume and a big blonde wig out of that bag. And Istayedperfectly still—aside from my hungrily twitching dick—when she completely undressed barely twenty feet away from me, changed into leather fetish gear, the wig, and a mask, and started to film herself dancing.

…As Velvet Villainess.

My teeth grit as I replay the image of her rolling her hips and dancing in front of that bookshelf. I wish I actuallyhadrecorded her on my phone, so I could watch it again.

Do I feel a twinge of guilt, leading her to believe I had that leverage over her?

A little. Maybe.

But it’s offset when my cock swells to steel in my pants, tenting the front as I groan and feel my balls churn.