Kiss The Villain

A model student with a double life gets caught by exactly the wrong man.

Kiss the Villain by Rina Kent opens the series of the same name, about two men who both have far too much to hide. By day, the main character is the well-behaved law student everyone sees in him; beyond that, he moves in circles nobody is allowed to know about. His new criminal law lecturer, Kayden Lockwood, sees through him in no time, and turns out to be anything but blameless himself. Because neither can betray the other without dragging himself down too, a stalemate arises that soon starts to look like mutual obsession.

This is dark MM romance in the fullest sense: lecturer and student, an age gap and two characters who would rather destroy each other than let go. Kent writes in the same universe as her Legacy of Gods series, so readers of those books will recognise names and connections. This English-language paperback runs to more than five hundred pages and has content warnings from the author at the front, so do read those first if you are sensitive to dark themes.