I personally learned about Club Alias through my therapist, Dr. Walker. After years of being his patient, he had me sign a non-disclosure agreement before telling me all about the club, where he thought I’d benefit more from than on any type of medication. And he was right. As long as I get my weekly dose, it gets me through the rest of the time without having to zombify myself with anti-anxiety and anti-depressants, which I’d taken various cocktails of since my parents died and never found the right combination for me. The club was the perfect prescription for me.
I pad into my bathroom and turn on the shower, letting the water heat up and making sure I have the right scented shampoo for my Dom of the evening. He prefers the fruity to the floral. After I’ve washed my hair, shave everything from my neck down, and soap up with my citrus body wash, I give everything one last extra rinse before stepping out and toweling off.
I wrap my hair up in a towel and slide my arms into my robe, tying the belt at the waist. I have a few hours to relax before I’m to be at the club tonight, and I plan on spending it in my comfy chair in my library, devouring the next VB Lowe book. Turns out, one of my favorite romance authors is a member of Club Alias and married one of the owners, so I get signed copies whenever she releases a new one. Which is quite frequently, if I think about it. I heard her talking one time about how her husband uses her word count as a game at home. I didn’t stick around to hear the details, but there was something about sexy punishments if she didn’t meet her goal for the day.
It sounded romantic to me, enough to make the tendrils of jealousy creep along the edges of my consciousness. And while I was having the greatest orgasms of my life every week, it made me uncomfortable to think about the loneliness I tried not to acknowledge when I was at home.
What would it be like to be in a relationship with someone who actually understands my needs? Someone who I could live this life with daily instead of having to wait for my weekly fix on Friday evenings. Sure, I could go any other day of the week if I wanted, but having to wake up so early during the work week—be there an hour before school starts plus my hour-long commute—doesn’t really allow for me to go more often. And normally I’m so exhausted after my Friday night adventure that going back Saturday evening is just a no-go for not only my ladybits but also my psyche.
Being on the receiving end of a Dom’s scene takes a lot out of a submissive, especially when those Doms are some of the best in the world thanks to Club Alias’s initiation rules and training. Yes, aftercare goes a long way right after you’re done to bring you back to reality from post-coital bliss, but I swear I need the whole rest of the weekend to feel halfway normal again by Monday. And that half-life high gets me through the rest of the week until Friday comes along once again.
But I’m not talking about having a relationship and doing full-on scenes every day. I’m talking about being with a man who understand my needs for submission in all aspects of my life. While I’m proud to be an independent woman, that doesn’t make it any less exhausting. That doesn’t make my anxiety any less, having to always be the only one there for myself, having to make every single little decision every moment of every day. For once, I’d like someone to be like “Hey, I’d like a burger tonight. Want to come?” Boom! Decision made about dinner and I didn’t even have to waste any brainpower on it. Or like “Hey, babe. The house is a wreck since we’ve been so busy. Let’s start with the kitchen and work our way to the bedroom, where we can reward ourselves when we’re done.” Sweet! Perfect! Plan made instead of having to wonder where the hell to start.
I bet Nate Black’s room is never a wreck.
Um, whoa. I don’t know where the hell that thought came from, but it needs to calm down with all that. I have no business wondering about anything having to do with that… guy. I don’t even know what to call him. He’s not really a bully. He’s never done anything to actually hurt me or anyone that I know of. He’s just… intimidating. Overwhelming. Definitely daunting and unnerving. Sometimes even menacing and straight-up terrifying—like when he slams the seats beneath the tables and gives his classmates that murderous look. But he’s never turned that expression on me before. The only looks he gives me are full of mischief and seduction, long, unwavering stares that make me fidget in my own skin. I’ve tried to stop showing any outward sign that he affects me, but it’s no use. I can’t hide the fact that he gets under my skin with just a look.
I shake away my thoughts, knowing I have a whole weekend of not having to deal with Nate. I can put him out of my head until Monday when I go back to work.
I curl up in my library and pull the bookmark from between the pages, starting on the chapter I left off on and getting lost in the story, not fighting the arousal that consumes me during the explicitly detailed love scenes as I imagine myself in the heroine’s place.
I choose to ignore the fact that my mind gives the Dominant hero the face of Nathaniel Black IV.
Chapter 3
Nate
I sit sprawled on Alistor’s couch, the party getting started earlier tonight than usual, since no one really had any projects or homework to do this weekend. I sip my beer, not really tasting it, because my mind is stuck on one thing… well, one person.
Ms. Richards.
I’ve been approached no less than fifteen times since I got here an hour ago. Every time a chick looks up and sees me sitting here alone without one of my buddies, they come over and try to entice me up to one of the bedrooms, or to the makeshift dance floor, or out to the hot tub. But I’ve shooed each and every one of them away, uninterested, my mind on the one woman who won’t leave my mind at peace when I’m not around her.
I don’t understand my obsession with her. Not really. I get the whole wanting what you can’t have aspect, seeing as she’s an employee at the school I attend. And I get the whole older woman thing. But isn’t the draw of being with an older woman to be with someone more experienced than you, to be with someone who can teach you a thing or two? The only thing Ms. Richards could teach me is the Dewey Decimal System, if I hadn’t already learned that in elementary school. She’s way too meek and innocent for it to be that.
But there’s just something about her that calls to me, calls to my very depths, my need to control and dominate. The way she practically cowers gives me this heady sensation, makes my dick hard every time she shrinks away. Yet at the same time, the thoughts I have while I’m stroking myself in the shower to images of her melting beneath my touch, enjoying what I’m doing to her, not flinching from my hands… That’s what always gets me off.
The thoughts of Ms. Evelyn Richards in bed with a guy like me is almost laughable in its awkward imagery. She wouldn’t know what to do with everything I’d want to give her. She’d be terrified of my impulses. Of the things I crave. Of the way I’d use her body for my pleasure. If she’s experienced anything at all, it’s been nothing but sweet lovemaking with beta males with small dicks, I’m sure. She’d probably cry at the first thrust of my cock.
I dream of a day when I find a woman who can fulfill those parts of me, the parts I have to tamper when I’ve fucked the girls I’ve been with. I lost my virginity my freshman year to a chick on the dance team. After that first time of getting off with someone else, it awoke a realization inside me. While I lay there after I’d come, I didn’t get the satisfaction everyone talks about. I still felt like something was missing, empty, as if the orgasm itself hadn’t been the end goal after all. And I’ve spent the past four years searching for that missing link, all while holding back, not releasing my urges, which I know has something to do with what’s missing.
If I were to act on my impulses, these girls would no doubt call me a monster. And while nothing would come of the accusations because of who I am, the tiny part of myself that’s good and right doesn’t want those rumors spreading around. Yeah, I’m known for being the bad boy, the tough guy, the fucker no one messes with. I’ve been called a fuckboy and a manwhore on my journey seeking to fill that emptiness
inside me. But not one girl I’ve been with could ever accuse me of being anything but a great lover. They could follow it up with me being an asshole, casting them aside and not wanting anything more from them; they could say I was emotionally distant and didn’t try to connect in any way other than physically. But not one of them could accuse me of hurting them, of doling out pain… like I really wanted to yet held back.
But in my fantasies, Ms. Richards takes it. She takes it, she likes it, and she begs for more.
“Fuck,” I growl, looking down at my Apple Watch and seeing it’s nearly eight. I wonder what Ms. Richards is doing right now. Probably at home, eating dinner on her couch, watching some documentary show on Netflix before going to bed by herself.
“It’s the quiet ones you have to watch out for.” Trenton’s words replay in my head. And quiet is definitely one word that accurately describes Evelyn Richards. It makes her all the more intriguing when I think about her.
“Fuck it,” I murmur to myself, standing and heading for the door, but not before tossing my empty beer bottle into the recycling bin in the kitchen. I sneer at some classmates as they knock over red plastic cups that are already starting to pile along every surface available.
As I gallop down the steps off the front porch, Alistor calls out to me, “Nate, where you going, man? That party is just getting started!”
I acknowledge him with a dismissive wave, pulling the keys to my truck out of my pocket, not bothering to answer him because the girl on his lap pulls his face into her cleavage as she throws her head back and laughs.
I slam my door behind me, sitting in the driver seat, and pull out my cell, staring at the time that lights up the screen. And then I make a decision.
A quick Google search gives me all I need to know. I don’t even have to break out my sources at the school. I use the app to give me directions, cursing that my destination is almost an hour away, but I don’t let it tamper this impulse.
I’m going to her house to see for myself just what Ms. Richards is up to on a Friday night.
I start the truck, set my radio for Bluetooth, and crank up the volume, choosing Submersed’s In Due Time album to play. When the opening notes of “Hollow” fill the cab, I breathe out through my pursed lips, take in a deep breath through flared nostrils, and nod to myself once before putting the shifter in Drive and pulling away from the curb.
As Donald Carpenter’s haunting voice sings about his soul being hollow and the person he loves being the only thing who can help him breathe, my foot grows heavier on the pedal, my speed picking up as I exit Black Mountain heading east toward the small town where Ms. Richards lives.
Every time a niggling thought tries to work itself into my consciousness about what a bad idea this might be, I shove it away, turning the music up louder, drowning everything out with the guitar solo in “Flicker.”
Exiting when the automated voice indicates nearly an hour later, the album has restarted and “Hollow” is soothing the anxiousness inside me once again. When I’m told my destination is on my right only two hundred yards ahead, I turn down my music and hit the button to end the driving directions. And I see I arrived just in time to watch as Ms. Richards pulls her door shut behind her, locks it, and then hurries to her small but newer model car in her driveway. My windows are tinted to an illegal darkness, so I don’t have to worry about ducking or anything as she backs out of her driveway then passes me on her way out of the neighborhood. Carefully, I do a three-point turn, keeping one eye on her car so I don’t lose her before following her onto the main street, keeping a distance so she doesn’t suspect she’s being followed.
“Where are you off to, little mouse?” I murmur, merging onto the mostly empty highway and backing off a bit so she won’t get spooked as I follow her when she exits.
Not ten minutes after we left her neighborhood, we’re in the tiny downtown area of the town next to Ft. Vanter, an army base a few of the kids at my school talk about all the time, because their parents are high-ranking soldiers of some kind and can afford the tuition and daily commute to the academy.
I watch as Ms. Richards pulls into the underground parking garage beneath a three-story huge brick building on a corner lot, and I pull over on the one-way street, hoping no one runs me off before I see where she’s going. I take a quick second to glance around at the business I’m in front of, seeing it’s a pet groomer and their hours closed at six. A peek at the sign next to me shows I can park here between the hours of 6:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. without getting a ticket, so I cut the engine and wait, my eyes never leaving the parking garage, hoping like hell there’s not an entrance to the building beneath it.
But I don’t have to hope for long. Soon, Ms. Richards in a knee-length black trench coat and heels she’s most definitely never worn to school before comes up the flight of stairs on the side of the building that puts her at street level before she hurries to a door around front. She pauses next to it, pulling something out of her pocket… a mask? Yes, a black one she ties behind her head and adjusts it around her eyes, and then she disappears inside.
“What in the…?”
I hop out of my truck, beeping the locks, and make my way across the street to where I saw her enter. As I approach, I see there are two doors side by side. One has a sign indicating it’s some kind of security business that closed at six, and the other is nondescript, not marked in any way. Even the windows have been blacked out. I reach out and tug, expecting it to be locked, but it’s not. And I pull it open slowly, carefully, not knowing what the hell could be inside.
The interior is completely black and empty, but there’s a staircase at the far wall, and as I step inside quietly, practically tiptoeing like a sleuth, the ceiling gives way to darkness interrupted by laser lights and strobes.
“What the fuck?” I whisper, approaching the stairs.
I take them one at a time, gently, slowly, not wanting to draw any kind of attention to myself.
“You’re early tonight, Eve,” I hear a female voice say over the low throb of music before my head breaks the surface of the second floor. I back up against the wall, staying hidden in the shadows, and listen.
“Oh, I guess I am. I was wondering why no one was at the door to check IDs. Guess I was a little excited to get here,” she replies and giggles. She fucking giggles. It’s such a sweet and carefree sound it makes me question if it was even her who made it.
The other woman asks her, “You meeting Master Connors tonight? Y’all’s scene last week was amazing. You took that bullwhip like a champ.” And my head whips in the direction of their voices even though I can’t see them.
Master Connors? Scene? Bullwhip? “What the fuck?” I repeat, wanting so badly to take a few more steps that would put my eyes above the second floor’s ground level so I can see what the hell is happening.
“Thank you,” Ms. Richards answers, and I can hear the shyness in her response, picture the blush rising in her face. “No, I’m meeting Lancelot.”
“Ah, nice choice. I heard he’s wonderful with a flogger. Have you gotten to scene with Scar yet?” the woman asks, and I don’t have time to dwell on the mention of a flogger and yet another man’s name before Ms. Richards responds.
“Twice. He did a great job, but I think my favorite so far has been Midas and his Hitachi. I could barely make it to my car my legs were so shaky.” She giggles again, and my head is spinning. Because I know what a fucking Hitachi is. I’ve watched enough fucking porn to know exactly what the vibrating wand can do to a woman.
The woman laughs along with her. “Girl, same. How many did you get? I know he made you count. He makes everyone count.”
“I got to six before I nearly passed out.” She snorts. “I know, I know,” she says, as if the other woman gave her a look. “I’m a wimp. Didn’t Dulce get to like… fourteen or something?”
“Seventeen before she literally fainted. She’s a badass.”
And it’s with that I realize the women are talking about or
gasms.
Meaning Ms. Richards let a man bring her to orgasm six times with a vibrator before her legs were quivering enough she could hardly walk to her car to make it home.
I’ve heard stories about this town, rumors of their being a club here in which all one’s sexual fantasies can be fulfilled. A BDSM club that only the super-rich and vetted can be a part of. But Ms. Richards… she’s a fucking school librarian.
What. The. Fuck? Did I enter the Twilight Zone when I came through that door now behind me? Did someone slip something into my drink at the party, and now I’m hallucinating or dreaming on the couch, still in Alistor’s living room? Because surely this isn’t the real Ms. Richards. Surely this isn’t the skittish little mouse who trembles in fear when I get too close.
I have to see for myself. I have to know for a fact what I’m hearing with my own ears will match what my eyes will see, because until then, I can’t fully believe it.
“Let me take your coat and I’ll check it. You need anything out of your pockets?” the woman asks, and I ascend three steps slowly, just enough to peek over the top step.
And my eyes land on the high heels I saw Ms. Richards was wearing while I was watching her from my truck. I try to take everything in at once—the dance floor, the DJ booth where all the lights are coming from, the bar, the horseshoe of giant leather booths, the red lights beyond them that look to be above different doorways hidden behind heavy black curtains, the glowing red neon lights at the very back of the club that has Club Alias in a classy curling script.
But my eyes shoot back to the high heel covered feet when I see them move slightly, and then my gaze trails upward just as Ms. Richards loosens the belt at her waist and unbuttons the row holding her trench coat closed. And then she lets the coat slip off her shoulders, catching it in her hands behind her, and she reveals what she’s wearing beneath it.
A Lesson in Blackmail: Black Mountain Academy / a Club Alias Novel Page 2
