Page 1 of Dark Thirst (The Scandalous Novellas)

I t’s a Tuesday night, and I’m bored in my dorm room.

My roommate, Stephanie, keeps going on and on about some guy she started following online.

Not just any guy though, a thirst trap content creator.

I roll my eyes as I listen to her gush about someone she doesn’t even know.

Well, it’s mostly just her talking about how hot he is, so I have to look for myself.

Typical. Some guy in a Ghostface mask with his shirt off, trying to flex his non-existent muscles for the girls to swoon over. Like I haven’t seen this done a million times before. I mean, to be fair, I do like Ghostface and masks in general, but this guy is just not it.

Using my hacking skills, I quickly find out who he is and then find his real social media pages.

Just as I suspected–typical fuck boy with an average face and body trying to gain some followers online.

I inspect closer and see he has a private page that offers more ‘personalized’ content for paying members.

I don’t need to pay to see his content since I can work around making an account, and it’s less than entertaining for me.

Stephanie, on the other hand, wouldn’t mind spending her money on some exclusive content.

I should share my skills with her so she doesn’t waste her money, but that’s not my problem.

The site has so many of these male content creators it’s wild. They all offer the same shit: tattooed, hard bodies with masks to hide their faces. Which is fine, but none of them call out to me in any way.

I aimlessly scroll through the site, profile after profile of the same content.

But there is one that makes me stop immediately.

The mask: Anubis. Now that is fucking hot.

Egypt has fascinated me my whole life, and this guy gets it.

He’s not shirtless like the other guys, but you can tell how ripped he is from his black form-fitting shirt.

Most of his videos have audio, but I don’t want Stephanie to hear what I’m watching.

Instead, I keep looking through his profile and find that he does other cosplays: Ghostface and Simon Riley dressed in tactical gear.

Something about this profile keeps me intrigued.

Maybe it’s because he uses movie accurate props or that he doesn’t show off his body like the others do, but whatever it is, I can’t get enough.

I finally realize that he has private content, and I wonder if he shows more of himself to his paying subscribers.

My eyes light up and I immediately get to work on hacking into his subscriber page.

If my almost four years in cybersecurity school taught me anything, it’s how to get into any virtual space without leaving a trace.

It only takes me seconds to access his subscription page.

This site sucks at security for its creators, which is a good thing for someone like me.

The first few videos are like the ones he posts on his free site—fully clothed, just posing for the camera.

But as I scroll down further, the content changes.

I stop dead in my tracks the moment I see him without a shirt on. Leaning closer to my screen to see some of his ink, I immediately recognize some of it, but it takes me a few moments to realize who it is.

Sean. My fucking step-cousin. I shake my head in disbelief.

“What’s wrong, Michelle?” Stephanie asks with a puzzled look on her face while sitting on her bed across the room.

“Er—um, nothing. Just have some more work to do for class that I forgot about,” I stutter, and she goes back to doing whatever she was doing.

Holy shit. I can’t believe I came across his profile and… I liked it. His body, the masks, how he poses and moves in his videos. I liked all of it. I have never been into this kind of content, but there is something about him that makes my stomach tight.

Sean came into my life seven years ago when his father married my widowed aunt. We don’t see each other all that often, but in recent years, I’ve looked at him a little differently and longer than usual. Since we didn’t grow up together, I never really considered him ‘family.’

I grab my headphones and continue my search. Once I become fixated on something, very little can distract me. And this is what I would call an obsession.