Chapter 18
LOCHLAN
Shit.
I stare at the laptop open on my knees as I sit up in bed in Kingsward Hall.
On one half of the screen, I watch via the spy camera hidden in the smoke alarm in her room as Galina peers at her laptop and types something furiously before sitting back, a frown on her face.
On the other side, I have a window open showing me everything currently happening on that laptop screen of hers.
Which is not fucking good.
She's figured out the fake tats.
I guess in hindsight, I should have expected that would happen at some point as the two of us got more physical. I mean they’re meant to be looked at, not moaned into, writhed against, or fucking scratched like a goddamn tigress.
I glance down at my bare torso and the marks on my hips from Galina’s nails, and a grin spreads over my face as I survey the raw, red lines where she clawed at my skin.
I get that it’s mostly just involuntary muscle spasms as her body seized and clenched, and that it stems from our dumb monkey brains flooding themselves with random chemicals and hormones, not “the throes of passion”.
Still, I’d like to think she raked her nails over my skin as a way of marking me. Branding me as hers.
That’s almost certainly not the case. But a guy can dream, right?
In any case, Galina figuring out that some of my tattoos aren’t real isn’t a big deal in and of itself. We're talking about a girl who also wears a mask to hide her identity from her hordes of fans. She even dons a blonde wig to hide her red hair.
My fake tats essentially do the same thing. Sure, I’m wearing a mask that completely covers my face and even my hair. But I also have pretty distinct real ink running down both arms.
I mean, the Kildare family crest on my bicep? Bit of a giveaway.
So as Ghost, I cover those with random skull imagery, ravens, other gothy shit, even a few over-the-top slogans like the “Ride fast, live hard” on my chest.
…I mean, I’ve ridden a motorcycle a total of once, when my cousin Bella and my uncle Hades peer pressured me into hopping onto the back of some souped-up widow-maker they’d thrown together in the garage, which resulted in me almost putting myself through a brick wall.
But I digress.
The problem is, Galina didn’t just notice the fake tats and move on.
…She started digging, like a little fucking bloodhound.
She started taking screenshots and opening them in Photoshop so she could overlay them and compare.
I know what she’s doing: she’s figuring out which of Ghost’s tattoos are fake and which are the real deal. And she’s doing this because she already has a decent idea that Ghost is a Knightsblood student. She’s singling out the real tats so that she can fucking look for them on her classmates.
…Or, perhaps, her Psychology of Deception and Performance TA.
Shit and double shit.
Part of me wants to message her right now and tell her to knock it the fuck off.
But that would tip her off that I’m still spying on her and, worse, have hacked her laptop and installed hidden screen mirroring software.
And even if that wasn’t enough to turn Galina nuclear, me confirming that she’s onto something would only make her dig deeper, and harder.
Which, as the current state of my throbbing dick can attest, is pretty hot.
Still, I’m not sure I’m ready to tell her who I am quite yet.
It’s not that I’m worried about Galina knowing that I, Lochlan Kildare, am the MaskTok darling known as The Ghost Prince.
Yes, our real-world interactions tend to involve lots of eye-rolling and a general attitude toward me that could best be described as “disdain”.
But I’d like to think once it was laid out to her that her charmingly annoying TA is also the man who’s been serving her up her deepest, darkest fantasies and making her come six ways to Sunday, she’d find a way to get past that.
It’s more that I’m worried this only works because it’s still in the realm of fantasy. Like, even though I’m actually with her, making her moan and writhe and orgasm, she has an out in the shape of my mask.
I’m still a stranger to her.
Once the sun comes up, she can go about her day as if whatever I did to her the night before was just a hot, dirty dream.
Not knowing who I am allows Galina to immerse herself fully in the fantasy. It allows her to talk to me without fear and to be herself in a way I’m not sure many people get. Ironically, it's the fact that she has no idea who this masked psycho is that permits her to let her walls down for him.
The reason I’m keeping the mystery going is that I don’t want to lose what we currently have. I have no idea what that is, of course. I mean, I guess we’re “hooking up”? It’s a “situationship”, sort of?
Wild. I haven’t even fucked her, and this is the most open I’ve ever been with a woman.
…And I’m wearing a mask, for fuck’s sake.
Anyway: for now, the mask stays. The fantasy stays. The real world and all that could mean remains outside.
For now.
A glance at the clock tells me it’s three in the damn morning by the time Galina stops Photoshop-sleuthing screenshots of my abs. She closes her laptop and exhales as she rakes her fingers through her long ginger hair.
My laptop, meanwhile, stays open. Do I feel bad when I watch Galina get undressed, take a shower, towel off, masturbate, and finally go to sleep?
Still no.
Pretty sure that’ll never change.
When I see her breathing regulate via the night vision camera hidden at the top of her bookshelf, I lie back in my own bed. But I’m all amped up thinking about Galina, and there’s no way I’m going to fall asleep now.
I consider jerking off, but then make a game-time decision that I’m done masturbating at all.
I’ll just save it for her.
I change into running gear and tiptoe down to the kitchen to mix up a protein shake before I go punish myself.
“Lochlan! What up, man!”
Goddammit.
What with it being three-twenty in the fucking morning, I was pretty sure that no one else in Kingsward would be up right now.
Guess again.
Ignacio “Nacho” Castellano is someone who’s hard to describe without sounding like a shithead.
His father, Javier Castellano, is the iron-fisted head of one of…
if not the…most powerful cartels in the world.
Javier is also a former UFC fighter and allegedly routinely spars against eight guys at a time to keep in fighting shape.
He also has reputation of cutting off the genitals of people who cross him and stuffing them into a new hole he so graciously cuts into their throats.
Nacho is not any of those things.
He’s a bit below average height, might actually be allergic to gyms or physical activity, doesn’t seem to have a violent bone in his body, and smiles more than anyone else I know.
Now, that should, at least on paper, make him the kind of guy you’d love to be friends with. Unfortunately, Nacho is also the single most annoying person I’ve ever met.
And I say that with love.
The problem…or at least my problem…is that Nacho is a fan.
…of me.
A really, really big one. And it’s honestly a touch creepy sometimes.
For instance, it’s great that the guy idolized the Privateers, comes to every game, and probably knows every single player’s stats. What’s not great is when he shows up to those games with posters featuring my fucking face and the words “Our good Loch charm”.
I mean…yikes. And that’s not even getting into the fucking life-sized cutout of me I’ve also seen him bring to games to sit next to.
Big yikes.
He also has a habit of dressing like me, copying my mannerisms, styling his fucking hair like mine, and it would not move my needle one bit to learn that he pledged Para Bellum because of…wait for it…me
It sucks, because Nacho is a really friendly guy.
A little weird, sure, and basically the poster boy for “kissless virgin”.
But I always feel like he means well. I’ve even tried to get him off his ass sometimes and come out on a run with me.
Or I’ve tried to give him some pointers before a party, so that he can actually speak to a woman without looking like he’s going to throw up.
But other times, I kinda go out of my way not to engage him, because it can be impossible to shake him off once he latches on.
Which is why I groan internally when I walk into the kitchen to find him standing at the big kitchen island with what looks like a pharmacy’s worth of pills and powders spread out in front of him.
“Didn’t think anyone else was up,” I frown, my eyes dropping to the Tony Montana sized mound of white powder that I really hope isn’t cocaine.
Nacho chuckles. “Well, I wanted to be up early for this…” He nods at the pill bottles and powders in front of him. “Rise and grind, right, man?”
My brow cocks. “This being…dealing drugs?”
Nacho laughs. “Nah, bro! These are my supplements. Magnesium, Vitamin D3…” He starts lifting the various bottles. “Probiotics, Omega-3s…”
I nod my chin at the two big piles of powder. “And that is…?”
“Oh,” he laughs again. “Nothing bad, I promise. This one is whey protein and the lighter colored stuff is creatine.”
I frown. “You do know you only need like a tablespoon each of those, right?”
He grins. “I’m stacking up, bro. Trying to get ripped, like you.”
Oh boy.
“Nacho, you do that much protein powder at once and you’re going to be shitting your pants for a week. Take it slow.”
He sighs. “I don’t have much time until tryouts, man.”
I have no idea what the fuck he’s talking about. I just want to get out of here, have a run, maybe cram in some sleep, and then get on with my busy schedule of stalking Galina.
“Tryouts for…?”
Nacho gives me a look. “For the Privateers, bro. Marco is leaving school?”
Okay, yeah. Marco Cervi, our beast of a tight end, is actually leaving Knightsblood a semester and a half early. His uncle, the current head of the Milan-based Cervi family, just had a bad cancer diagnosis, and Marco is going to be stepping up to run things for a while.
But that's not the bigger question here.