A Lesson in Blackmail: Black Mountain Academy / a Club Alias Novel Read online

  A Lesson in Blackmail

  Black Mountain Academy / a Club Alias Novel

  KD Robichaux

  Contents

  Also by KD Robichaux

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  Also by KD Robichaux

  Also by KD Robichaux

  All Links Available *Here*

  THE BLOGGER DIARIES TRILOGY

  Wished for You

  Wish He Was You

  Wish Come True

  THE CLUB ALIAS SERIES

  Confession Duet (Before the Lie & Truth Revealed)

  Seven: A Club Alias Novel

  Knight: A Club Alias Novel

  Doc: A Club Alias Novel

  ALSO AVAILABLE IN THE CLUB ALIAS WORLD

  Mission: Accomplished (Knight Novella Boxed Set)

  Scary Hot: A Club Alias/Until Series Crossover

  Moravian Rhapsody: A Club Alias Novella

  A Lesson In Blackmail (A Black Mountain Academy Novel)

  STANDALONES

  No Trespassing

  Dishing Up Love

  COWRITTEN WITH CC MONROE

  Steal You

  Number Neighbor

  Chapter 1

  Nate

  Skittish little mouse. That’s what she is. With her thick-rimmed glasses perched on her cute, slightly upturned nose. Her light-brown hair falls around her face, and she doesn’t bother pushing it back, instead using it as a curtain to shield herself. When someone approaches her circulation desk here in the school library, Ms. Richards quietly helps them with a small smile on her face, her full lips slightly twitching in the corners with nervousness, even though she’s supposed to be the authority figure here. This is her domain, as Black Mountain Academy’s librarian. Yet, she reacts to us students as if we’re the boss of her.

  Skittish little mouse.

  I sit at a long wooden table surrounded by five other chairs filled with fellow upper crust students in my class. My six-three frame takes up more than my half of this side of the table, my arm laying across the back of Lindy’s chair next to me. She’s talking across me to Reese Trenton, who’s pretty much the only true friend I’ve got in this place. Everyone else just wants a piece of me, being Nathaniel Jacobson Black IV, great-grandson of the founding father of Black Mountain Academy. Hell, our family founded Black Mountain—period. Lindy’s hand frequently brushes against my abs, even as she tries to flirt with Trenton, leaning over me to get closer to the both of us. Fucking ho. She’s slept with three quarters of the swim team, me included.

  I allow a second to think about if she knows we all call her an initiation to the team, not that she’d care. She wears her skank status like a badge of honor.

  But my mind quickly turns back to who I’m actually infatuated with.

  Ms. Richards.

  Ms. Evelyn Richards.

  Evie to her fellow staff members.

  She’s younger than the rest of the teachers. Twenty-two, maybe twenty-three. Yet she seems so much younger than even my eighteen years. She radiates purity, innocence, and it calls to the darkness inside me that wants to dirty her up.

  My favorite part of the day is study hall, when I get to come to the library and fuck with her. I live for the hour in which I get to make her squirm. Nothing is better than leaning far over the circulation desk, forcing her to meet my eyes, only inches away from her delicate features, and asking the virtuous Ms. Richards in a low, gravelly voice where I can find a book on the Kama Sutra. And then hearing her stutter trying to get the words out that nothing like that can be found in the academy’s library.

  I’m sure half the things I say and do to her could be labeled as sexual harassment, but who’s going to turn me in? The descendant of the very people she works for.

  So I sit here and stare at her, like I always do, watching her try to ignore the heat of my gaze I know she feels, because every once in a while, she can’t help but to look up and check to see if I’m still staring.

  “Stop being a creeper,” Trenton tells me when Lindy finally gives up and turns to face Megan in the other direction, and he punches me in the arm closest to him. “You’re going to make that poor woman piss herself one of these days.”

  “It’s just too easy,” I murmur, catching her purse her lips as if she heard my voice but is still fighting not to glance this way.

  “I’ve done some fucked up shit in my day, but this? This is low, man. Pick on someone your own size. She’s like… half of you.”

  I can see him shake his head in my peripheral vision, never taking my eyes off Ms. Richards.

  I smirk. “There’s just something about her. She’s nothing like the girls we’ve grown up with. The hos we’re surrounded by,” I tell him low enough only he can hear. “She’s so innocent-looking. So quiet.”

  “Well… she is a librarian. It’s kind of in her MO to be quiet. And innocent? I don’t know about all that. Don’t they say it’s the quiet ones you need to watch out for? I bet she’s a freak in the—”

  Two things happen simultaneously at that moment. Ms. Richards turns a startled expression our way, having clearly heard Trenton’s assessment, and the bell rings, cutting off what he was about to say and indicating study hall has come to an end.

  But I don’t move. My eyes narrow on her flustered features. What was she so startled by in his words? That two young men were talking about her in a sexual light, or was it that Trenton hit the nail on the head with his warning about the quiet ones?

  She whips around to face away from us when she sees my measuring look, and I finally glance away from her to gather my books and stuff them in my backpack hanging on the back of my chair as I stand. I stick my pen behind one ear and lace my arms through the straps of my bag before shoving my seat under the table like a fucking gentleman, rolling my eyes when everyone else besides Trenton just leaves theirs out for anyone to trip on, for Ms. Richards to do their dirty work. He knows this shit makes me crazy and is a good enough friend not to fuck with me.

  When everyone else makes their way to the door, I circle the table, pushing in all the other chairs, and I don’t do it quietly, letting my frustration with everyone be known. A few look back at me as I grimace in their direction, having the decency to look a little guilty for acting like children who don’t clean up after themselves.

  I shove under the last chair, loudly skidding it across the tile floor and letting it smack into the wood of the table to drive my point home for them not to make the same mistake next time—not that they ever remember, spoiled, lazy-ass fucks. That’s when I hear the sweet, timid voice come from the circulation desk, shocked that she’s actually gathered the courage to initiate a dialogue between us, when usually it’s me who begins our conversations with something that purposely makes her uncomfortable.

  “Thank you, Nathaniel. You don’t have to do all that. I’ll get i—”

  But I cut Ms. Richards off with a stern look, and her jaw snaps close
d. I take slow steps toward her, allowing everyone to finally file out through the door of the library before I approach the desk. And then with the tone I know makes her squirm the most, I bend over, place my elbows on the surface, and grip my hands together as I lean toward her and tell her, “It shouldn’t be your job to pick up after the senior class, Ms. Richards.” I feel a thrill go straight to my dick from the way she shivers at the sound of her name from my lips. “If we’re old enough to be consenting adults—” I pause, letting the message behind my words take hold in her mind. “—then they’re old enough to fucking clean up after themselves.” I don’t include myself in that last part, because I always take care of my shit, and she knows it.

  She nervously pushes her hair out of her face and her glasses up the bridge of her nose, her eyes closed tightly behind the lenses while she swallows thickly. She nods in quick, shallow jerks of her head before she meets my eyes. “Th-thank you then, Mr. Black. N-Nathaniel. Better hurry before you’re l-late for your next class,” she responds, the same way she always tries to dismiss me after I’ve fucked with her.

  “You’re welcome, Ms. Richards.” I trail my gaze from the top of her straight hair, down her white blouse primly buttoned to the hollow of her throat that just screams for my hand to be wrapped around it, over her small breasts and narrow waist, the gentle swell of her hips encased in navy slacks that hug her luscious thighs before the material flares at the knee, and end my perusal on her little leather flats with the rounded toes. When I meet her eyes again, she’s practically panting with her anxiousness—and I can’t help but fantasize her breaths coming out in this way if I were to drive my cock deep into her pussy.

  “Have a good day,” I finish before standing to my full height. When I hit my palm against the surface of the circulation desk, she jumps before nodding in response, not saying another word.

  Skittish little mouse.

  Chapter 2

  Evie

  I don’t turn my head to watch him exit, but I can’t stop my eyes from following his obscenely tall form as he makes his way to the door of my library before shoving his way through it. My library—I snort. It’s not my library. It’s his family’s library. Nathaniel Black the fourth, heir to the Black throne upon their very own mountain the academy is nestled beside. Because if your family is rich enough to live there, high over the towns surrounding the mountain or in the neighborhoods nearby, then you’re loaded enough to attend the private school his family built over a century ago. That boy… man is going to be the death of me. No really—he’s going to give me a freaking panic attack that leads to my eventual demise.

  He’s done nearly everything to taunt me that I could possibly think of aside from actually putting his hands on me. Yet the words he uses along with his tone feel like a caress and a slap at the same time. Since the first day of the school year, my first day as the librarian of Black Mountain Academy, it’s like he’s made it his mission to… not quite bully me, but make me super damn uncomfortable. And what exactly could I do about it? After the first few weeks of it happening, I’d gone to report him to the principal, and he made it very clear that anything written up about a member of the Black family would be brushed under the rug so not to waste my time. I hadn’t even gotten anything but Nathaniel’s name out of my mouth before I was cut off and dismissed.

  And as this is my dream job, I figured I could put up with him for a year, seeing as he’s a senior and will no doubt graduate at the end of it. Because that is one good thing about Nathaniel Black IV—he’s brilliant. Top of his class. Star athlete. Everything about him is perfect. Scarily so. Obsessively so. Aside from my degrees to become a librarian and a teacher, I took extra courses in psychology because I found the subject fascinating and even halfway considered becoming a school counselor at some point. It was easy for me to spot the clear signs of OCD in the young man. But having basically been muzzled when it came to this particular student, I kept my observations to myself.

  His school uniform is always pristine. I once saw a food fight break out in the cafeteria, and he stormed out after something got on his shirt. He changed into a clean one he obviously kept stowed in his locker for such an occasion. He aligns his textbook, notebook, and three pencils just so at his place, at the same exact seat he sits in every study hour. He wears a pencil behind his ear between classes, as if to always be prepared in case he has to write something down in the hallway. Not to mention he always pushes in all the chairs every day as if he can’t leave the library until it’s back to the way he found it—the way I had it. I thought about testing a theory, leaving chairs out before his study hall group comes in to see what his reaction would be, but I found myself hesitating, as if afraid to catch his look of disappointment in me or something.

  Which is utterly ridiculous. He’s an eighteen-year-old high school student. I’m a twenty-two-year-old woman with way more life experience than he’s had. Why should I care if anything I do disappoints him?

  I will admit it was quite startling when Reese Trenton mentioned that it’s the quiet ones like me who are the freaks. Quiet, yes, but it’s taken years of therapy to come to terms with the fact that what I am is not freakish. If it weren’t for Dr. Walker, I’d be lost, thinking these feelings and urges inside me made me the freak Trenton spoke about. Thank goodness the bell rang and snapped me out of it before I could correct what I heard. Because speaking about personal and sexual things with my students is obviously a no-no.

  I spend the next hour returning books to their shelves and sending out email notices of books being late from students. Today is Friday, and there are no afterhours available to students, so I get to leave earlier—3:30—than every other day at 5:00 p.m. I’ll open again early Monday morning as usual, an hour before school starts.

  I love the fact that I get to go home early on Fridays. It gives me a chance to relax and prepare for the night at Club Alias, pretty much my weekly reward for getting through another five days as a functioning adult.

  Oh, Club Alias. My happy place, my escape, my oasis. It’s the one place I can go and shed the worries of my daily life and relax. As soon as I walk through that door, it’s like the rest of the world just disappears. I’m no longer scared of my own shadow. All my anxiety fades away as soon as the darkly lit space swallows me up and I inhale the scent of leather and expensive colognes and perfumes. My hesitations disappear when I no longer have to make decisions for myself and allow the Doms to take away the responsibilities that weigh heavily on me. I let them make all the hard choices and just follow their instructions, trusting they’ll make everything good for me. As long as I’m a good submissive, everything always turns out wonderful. I don’t even have to think, just do. And since every single member of Club Alias has been vetted by a team of experts, including my therapist Dr. Walker, who is a co-owner, I trust every member wholeheartedly.

  After the hour commute home, I lock my door behind me and hang my purse on the hook on the wall in the little foyer. I’m proud to say at twenty-two I own my own home. It’s a small two-bedroom house in a nice little town I’ve called home my whole life. When my parents passed away a few years ago, they left me a small fortune in life insurance policies. The giant house I lived in growing up held way too many memories and was entirely too large for just me to live in and take care of, so I downsized to this adorable place I’ve slowly made my own. Each room has been a fun project to makeover, with only my yard and the kitchen left to go.

  I walk past the first room I ever redid, the formal dining room I converted into my personal library, my dream room. Three of the walls are lined with floor-to-ceiling bookcases full of nearly every genre. There’s a writing desk in the center of the room, and an overstuffed chair with a large ottoman in one corner where I spend hours getting lost between pages. A thick rug covers the wood floor that I love to squish between my toes. And there’s a small side table next to the chair that’s only large enough to hold a diffuser and my coffee. Yeah, it probably is weird to fill the
room with relaxing lavender-scented steam and then hop myself up on caffeine, but that’s just who I am as a person.

  I pass through my living room and past my kitchen, making my way to my bedroom, where I toe off my ballerina flats and nudge them into the closet. I strip out of my blouse and slacks then shimmy out of my panties tossing them into the hamper beside my dresser. I unhook and let my bra fall down my arms, catching it in my hand before putting it in the top drawer where it goes with all the rest. I didn’t sweat today, seeing as it’s air conditioned in the school and a wonderfully mild temperature in the middle of autumn, so no need to wash my bras after every wear and wear them out. Those suckers are expensive. And while I have enough money to live comfortably for years to come if I don’t splurge, thanks to my inheritance, undergarments are not something I want to waste money on.

  Although there was one splurge I made, but I’ve definitely gotten my money’s worth out of it—the five-figure membership fee for Club Alias. An extravagant amount to most people, but priceless when it comes to my mental health. I’d pay it over and over again for the peace it brings me, but luckily, it’s a lifetime membership unless one breaks the rules and gets banned.

  I, for one, am anything but a rulebreaker, so I won’t ever have to worry about getting booted from my happy place. The rules of Club Alias are like Fight Club—you don’t talk about it. You don’t tell anyone about it unless you trust them to join, at which time you have to be their sponsor. You’re responsible for them, and if they break the rules, it’s on you. No one wants to get kicked out, so everyone is super cautious about the people they’re willing to vouch for.