Chapter 1 #3
Everyday Galina Nikitin is good. She has two loving, wildly overprotective fathers and a slightly annoying but likewise overprotective big brother.
She listens to bright, bouncy pop music, dresses in preppy J.
Crew type clothes, and wears her red hair either in a prim, high ponytail or else neatly brushed down over one shoulder.
She’s a model student, the perfect daughter, and typically has no trouble making new friends wherever she is because she's so darned cheerful.
This other version of Galina is the part that lurks inside me.
The part that stretches awake and throbs when I cinch the choker around my throat. The part that notices my nipples tightening to points as I set up my phone in the middle of the ring light and fiddle with my preset filters.
The part that has 923,000 followers who know her as Velvet Villainess.
Whose worst-thing-she’s-ever-done has a million views on social media.
Who’s about to one-up Mariana Guzman with an even bigger breadcrumb.
Kingsward Hall, like a few other buildings on the Knightsblood campus, was once the house of one of the founders of the college. The Pembroke family lived here and continued to live here for another hundred years or so until they decided they were done living on a college campus.
The family ended up leaving the property to the school, on condition that Para Bellum have unconditional and exclusive use of it.
To symbolize this, they even mounted a big brass “key to the home” mounted on a plaque and gave it to the first new Para Bellum residents, who in turn put it on a shelf full of leather-bound books in their prestigious library and promptly forgot all about it.
I swallow as I glance up over my shoulder at that very key, still on its plaque on the heavy bookshelves, surrounded by priceless first editions.
I know someone’s going to notice it at some point. I also know that it’s going to stir my followers up into a frenzy and probably snag me five thousand new subscribers.
Time to give the people what they want.
I tap the record button.
The music plays quietly from my phone speakers, just to give me a beat.
I’ll add the music at a normal volume when I edit this later.
Slowly, I start to dance to the track, sensually rolling my hips and looking straight into the camera.
My hands slide up my sides, my fingers splaying erotically over my breasts as I run my tongue over my lips.
The funny thing is, my audience is overwhelmingly female and, according to a recent survey I did, mostly straight. So it’s not like I dress up in fetish gear and dance sensually for the male gaze.
I do it because I think a woman seeing another woman owning her sexuality is empowering.
There are other female romance content creators that I follow, and I love when they produce stuff like this. It’s not because I’m sexually interested in them. It’s because the female form is sexy, empirically speaking, and women owning their sexual expression is fucking awesome.
So when I dance, I’m channeling every ounce of that raw sexuality inside me.
My hips grind. My thighs squeeze together. I’m very aware of the fact that there’s nothing but skin against skin between my legs.
A flush ripples thorough me as I think about The Ghost Prince’s latest video, where he was using a knife as if it were his cock, thrusting at the air in front of his gyrating hips and flexing abs.
Later, when I edit and eventually post this video, it’ll have my full review of the last dark romance book I read in the first comment. But for now, there's just me, the ring light, the camera, and that dark thing twisting and slithering inside me as heat pools between my thighs.
I end up doing three takes, just to make sure I have enough usable content to edit together later. Then I’m done.
Time to take the mask off.
Time to go back to the usual version of Galina Nikitin.
Time to go find my friends, none of whom have the smallest idea that I’m Velvet Villainess.
I grin as I pull off my mask, wig, and top before I stuff everything into the small bag. God, this video is going to catch like wildfire. I blush, feeling a pulse tug at my core as I walk over to turn off the ring light.
I’m…wet.
I can’t help it. It’s all of it: the mask, the costume, the character, the fact that I can truly let myself go when I am Velvet Villainess. The fact that as much as I try to tell myself otherwise, I get off on the exhibitionism.
The ring light flicks off, plunging the library back into near-total darkness.
“Well, well, well...”
I whirl so fast it’s like I’ve been stabbed with a cattle prod, my flailing arm sending the tripod and ring light crashing to the floor and the scream strangling in my throat.
My pupils go wide as I stare in fear, horror, and shock at the man sitting languidly in a tall-backed upholstered chair at the other side of the library.
His black-clad legs are slightly spread.
His tattooed hands are casually resting on the armrests of the chair, one of them drumming an easy “tap-tap” rhythm.
Shadows etch deeply across the grooved and chiseled muscles of his bare, tattooed torso and arms.
But it's all secondary to the face that looks right into my soul, even though I can’t see his eyes.
The face covered entirely by a black tactical mask with a white crown painted across it.
Every nerve ending in my body ignites. Every synapse fires.
And yet, I can’t move.
It's him.
The Ghost Prince laughs, the sound jangling roughly through his voice modulator and sending heat rippling through me.
“Don’t stop now, little villain,” he says mechanically. “That was just starting to get good.”