Kiss the Villain

Kiss the Villain is a standalone queer romance novel within the series The Villains by prolific New York Times and USA Today best-selling author Rita Kent. Published on March 18, 2025, Kiss the Villain will be followed by two other standalone novels, Hunt the Villain and Crave the Villain, which are expected to be published in March 2026 and March 2027, respectively. Kiss the Villain is also a spinoff from Kent’s other series, specifically The Legacy of Gods series, and is expected to overlap with her other new series, The Vipers. Kent’s novel sits firmly in the dark romance genre with its morally grey characters and dubiously consented sexual content, similar to K. A. Knight’s Den of Vipers, L. J. Shen’s Sinners of Saints series, and E. L. James’s Fifty Shades series. Kiss the Villain follows the questionable love story between Gareth Carson, golden boy of the wealthy Carson family with secret murderous tendencies, and Kayden Lockwood, Gareth’s handsome and controlling professor seeking to kill Gareth’s grandfather to avenge his deceased wife. Though Kayden initially approaches Gareth with nefarious intentions, the two form an unlikely attachment that quickly turns into obsession. As they navigate this unexpected development, Kent explores themes including The Cost of Social Masking, The Lasting Effects of Past Trauma, and The Relief of Establishing Power Dynamics.

This study guide refers to the Blackthorn Books, LLC e-book edition published on March 18th, 2025.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of sexual content, child abuse, child sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual violence, rape, self-harm, death by suicide, death, and graphic violence. In particular, the source material features dubious consent scenarios.

Plot Summary

At 21 years old, Gareth believes the world is (or should be) at his feet. When the Serpents—the rival gang of Gareth’s own gang, the Heathens—put on a party, Gareth makes a plan. He intends to drug Yulian, the Serpents’ leader, and humiliate him by making it seem as if he’d had sex with Gareth. He slips a drug into Yulian’s drink and follows him.

However, in a darkened room, he mistakes another man for Yulian. The man forces Gareth to perform oral sex on him as punishment for what he presumes was a true act of sexual assault against Yulian. The next day, Gareth is still troubled by his body’s reaction to the encounter. He goes to his law class at King’s U College and discovers that the man he encountered the night before is his new criminal justice professor, Kayden Lockwood.

Kayden recognizes Gareth and announces that the class will be performing a mock trial. He assigns Gareth to lead the defense team, comprised of the least competent students, while the best students are assigned to the prosecution team. After class, Kayden antagonizes Gareth, inferring that he was a willing participant in the rape, and suggests that there will be other such sexual encounters in the future. He doesn’t, however, reveal his true plan: to kill Gareth’s family out of revenge for Gareth’s grandfather’s participation in his wife Cassandra’s death.

Gareth storms off, plotting his revenge. For days, he stalks Kayden, learning his precise daily routine. He breaks into Kayden’s home, planning to drug and rape him like Kayden did to Gareth. Expecting such a plan, Kayden quickly gains the upper hand in their struggle and drugs Gareth instead. Gareth denies his attraction to men and specifically Kayden, but he is disturbed to find pleasure in Kayden’s dominance, praise, and the edge of pain as Kayden rapes him a second time. While Gareth wants to blame his body’s reaction on the drugs, he knows the truth and leaves.

Gareth avoids Kayden, who obtains his phone number and continues to bother him. Kayden finds pleasure in breaking Gareth’s public persona of model student and revealing what he suspects is an undiagnosed antisocial personality disorder. 

When Kayden finds out that Gareth and his fellow Heathens are having their initiation night, he infiltrates the meeting and seeks Gareth out. He becomes jealous when he finds Gareth with a girl. He corners Gareth alone and bluntly psychoanalyzes him, dismissing Gareth’s threats to kill him. 

As Kayden rapes him once again, Gareth feels disarmed by his own enjoyment, feeling true sexual desire for the first time. When Kayden is about to initiate penetrative sex, however, Gareth begs him to stop. Kayden listens and opts to penetrate him with his fingers instead. When they finish, Kayden tells Gareth he owns him and claims that it’s only a matter of time before Gareth fully submits to him.

When Gareth attends Kayden’s class two days later and presents his opening remarks in the mock trial, Kayden publicly dismisses his work. Later, Gareth confronts Kayden at his apartment and accuses Kayden of sleeping with other students. His attempt to choke Kayden quickly turns into sex. Kayden makes a bet that if Gareth can physically gain the upper hand on Kayden, he will allow Gareth to penetrate him. Gareth uses a concealed taser to his advantage, but Kayden manages to subdue him and tie him up. Kayden then forces Gareth to perform oral sex on him again.

For days afterward, Kayden does not contact Gareth, who seeks advice online and finds a kindred spirit in a user named QuietRage. When Kayden contacts Gareth again, Gareth rushes to his apartment to confront him, only to find Kayden’s two mothers there. Playing his “golden boy” role, Gareth has dinner with Kayden and his mothers. 

In the following days, Gareth attempts to ignore Kayden, but when he sees Kayden with a woman at a coffee shop, his jealousy erupts. He demands that Kayden meet him at his apartment immediately. Kayden antagonizes Gareth, who claims not to belong to him. Kayden offers him two options: leave or stay and have penetrative sex.

Gareth chooses to stay but argues that if Kayden can claim ownership over him, the reverse is also true. He also asks to be restrained during sex, as he can only allow penetrative sex under the illusion that he’s being forced. When they have sex, Gareth finds a peace he’s rarely known before. 

As Kayden watches Gareth sleep, he struggles with his growing obsession with Gareth. He is besieged by nightmares of his deceased wife Cassandra, but he can’t bring himself to end his relationship with Gareth. For weeks, they continue to have sex, and Gareth struggles with his growing possessiveness of Kayden and their relationship’s secrecy. 

Troubled, Gareth goes to an archery range to practice. Kayden comes to confront him about his distance; they argue, and Kayden manages to convince Gareth to return with him. As they are leaving, they find a kitten beneath Gareth’s car. Though Gareth is apprehensive of the kitten, Kayden watches with mirth as he slowly grows accustomed to its presence. In the quiet domestic moment, Gareth voices his dissatisfaction with their secret relationship. His confession prompts Kayden to abandon his plan to murder Gareth’s family for his grandfather’s alleged involvement in Cassandra’s murder.

In their next class, Kayden eviscerates Gareth’s work in front of the class. Furious and hurt, Gareth storms out. Later, when he confronts Kayden about it in his office, he finds himself crying and confessing that Kayden’s treatment reminds him of his old French teacher, who’d praised him, kidnapped him, and used him for ransom. Kayden promises to change, and Gareth realizes he has deep feelings for Kayden.

After Gareth tells him about the kidnapping, Kayden notices how dependent he becomes on Kayden’s presence and approval. When Gareth attempts to elicit his jealousy with a woman, Kayden warns him against his childish temper. Gareth’s cousin Niko finds them during the confrontation and thinks Kayden is attacking Gareth. As Kayden steps away, he overhears Gareth telling Nico that Kayden is the “one guy” he’s felt an attraction for, but that their relationship is nothing serious. 

One day, Gareth comes to Kayden’s apartment and finds him sick. He nurses him through his fever, and in a moment of intimacy, he asks if he should move to the United States, where they could be public with their relationship. Kayden gently declines, however, as his family and Vencor, the secret society they belong to, would object to their relationship and most likely kill Gareth. The next morning, Gareth receives a text from an unknown number with pictures of Kayden’s deceased wife Cassandra, claiming that Kayden is lying to him.

After an emotional conversation with his mothers, who want him to stop pursuing Cassandra’s murderers, Kayden reflects on his devotion to Gareth and realizes that he’s never loved anyone as much. Gareth calls Kayden and confronts him about Cassandra, accusing him of lying. Gareth goes to meet Declan, Cassandra’s half-brother, who sent the pictures to him. 

Declan kidnaps Gareth and tortures him; like Kayden, he believes that Gareth’s grandfather played a part in Cassandra’s murder. Kayden finds Gareth and frees him from Declan and his men. He is in a straitjacket, brutally smashing his head against the wall. He takes Gareth home and, when Gareth wakes full of rage, tells him to redirect his rage. Gareth mutilates the lily flower Kayden had tattooed in Cassandra’s honor. Kayden returns Gareth to his family, leaving his personal agents to guard them, and goes to deal with Declan.

As Gareth struggles after his kidnapping, he tells his family about his relationship with Kayden. He also confesses to the murder of the father of his first girlfriend, Harper, who’d died by suicide after years of sexual abuse. Gareth’s grandfather then admits that covering up that incident came back to haunt him when the police chief-turned-senator he’d pressured used him to cover up Cassandra’s murder. 

Later, one of Kayden’s agents tells Gareth that Declan has died, but Kayden is now in danger because Vencor knows about his relationship with Gareth. Gareth convinces the agent to take him to Kayden, and they reunite—only for Kayden’s half-brother Grant to show up, armed and intent on killing them. 

Kayden saves Gareth by taking the bullet aimed at him. After Kayden gets out of the hospital, they recommit to one another. After tense conversations with Gareth’s family and a trip to New York to meet Kayden’s nephew Kane, Kayden proposes to Gareth in front of the house he bought for them. Gareth accepts.