A Lesson in Blackmail - Black Mountain Academy

His voice changes a little, as if he’s no longer a soothing therapist and is now something… different. “Did you inform anyone of your plans before this happened?”

“Mmm…” She lets out high-pitched hum. “Sort of. Dixie knew I was leaving with him.” She suddenly gasps, her eyes wide, and she slaps her hand over her mouth. “Shit,” she says behind her hand.

My eyes go back and forth between her and the doctor, and then it dawns on me… she had wanted to keep it a secret I had been at the club. My girl can’t lie for shit.

“It wasn’t her fault.” I sit forward, looking the man in his eyes. “She had no idea I was following her. And then I walked into the club and found out what it was.”

“Following her.” Doc’s nostril’s flare.

“Yes,” I admit without hesitation.

“Stalking her?” He sets his notepad on the table next to him, and I suddenly get the impression I need to explain things quickly and carefully before this guy gets violent. And I’m not foolish enough to think I could take him. The dude has at least fifty pounds of muscle on me.

“It wasn’t like that. I thought about her constantly, and not like an OCD intrusive thoughts kind of way, but like a guy who is totally infatuated with a pretty girl kind of way—”

Evie lets out a high-pitched squeak that sounds almost like a giggle but not quite, since she still has her hand over her mouth.

“Anyway, a quick Google search gave me her address…” I turn to her, lowering my brow and say in a scolding voice, “Really need to get you out of the white pages, baby.” I turn back to Doc. “…and I showed up to her house just to like… see what she was doing. I thought she’d just be, I don’t know, watching TV or something. I really didn’t think it through. Didn’t think about how crazy I’d look just showing up like that. All I knew was I had to see her. But when I showed up, she was leaving. And I followed her.” I deflate a little. “Jesus fuck, I sound like a creeper. Trenton was right.”

She makes that awkward giggle sound again, and I shake my head. I’ve come this far; might as well tell him the rest of it.

“I thought it would be perfect. Maybe she would just be going to a restaurant or something and I could act like I just happened to be running into her. Like, ‘Heeey, Ms. Richards. What are you doing here?’ I don’t know. Some shit like that. But then she puts on some lacy mask around her eyes and disappears behind this super ominous-looking door. So I followed her in. And that’s when I discovered what was inside.”

“There was no one checking IDs?” Doc growls.

Evie raises her hand. “I got there super early by accident. It… it had been a rough day,” she adds, and I wince, knowing it had been me who made her feel that way.

Doc turns his eyes from her back to me. “And how exactly did you know what the club was if she got there before it opened?”

“Kinda put two and two together when I climbed the stairs and saw Ms. Richards standing there in her lingerie,” I tell him, my voice flat. And the way his hands fist where his wrists rest on his crossed leg makes me narrow my eyes. “Wait a minute…” I sit back and twist so my back rests against the arm of the couch. “Have…” I look between Doc and Evie, my brows dragging together as the thought that just occurred to me fills me with raging jealousy. “Have you two—”

“No!” Evie cries, but my eyes stay locked with Doc’s.

“You were the one who introduced her to this form of ‘therapy.’ You’re part owner of this club. Does that mean you—” I see nothing but red and can’t seem to finish that sentence. “I cannot have a therapist who has fucked the woman I—”

Before I know what’s happening, Evie is straddling my lap, taking my face in her hands, and forcing me to look into her eyes instead of at Doc, who I want to murder right now even though he’s bigger than me. I’m pretty sure there’s enough adrenaline in my system right now that I could swing this whole goddamn couch at his fucking head.

“Nathaniel,” she murmurs, scooting even closer on my lap to where she’s sitting over my hips instead of my thighs. She leans forward and kisses me, and some of the red dissipates. “Baby, I’ve never been with Doc. And while I might’ve had a little crush on him when I was seventeen and thought he was super cute—”

I growl, every muscle in my body tensing and ready to attack the fucker.