The Venture Capitalist by LaVie EnRose, L.V. Lewis Page B

matters.” Darnelle and Rapper Guy’s heads swing from Keisha to me as if they’re watching a high-noon duel.
    “I didn’t go to any trouble. I can’t say that Darryl wasn’t frustrated a time or two. Apparently you were indisposed each time he tried to contact you.”
    “I’m a working girl,” she says, then thinks better of her choice of words, “I mean, a business woman. I’m usually busy.”
    “I see that,” I say with a sardonic expression.
    She narrows her eyes and takes another sip of her champagne, frowns as if she’s tasted something bitter, then she smiles when Darnelle whispers something to her. Whatever it is they share, causes Keisha to smile and kiss Darnelle’s cheek.
    I’m about ready to drag her away from this menagerie when Darryl comes over to deliver a message to me. I stand and point, putting as much dominant alpha male in my demand as I dare, so it won’t have the opposite effect and send her running again. “Stay here until I get back. Don’t make me have to search for you again.”
    When she doesn’t recoil or reject my command, and I’m satisfied she will do as I say from the coy little Mona Lisa smile she displays. I follow Darryl back to the quiet of the hallway leading to the offices. “This had better be a life or death situation,” I say to my beleaguered assistant.
    “The Hong Kong client wants you to look over the contract language again. They aren’t happy with the financial consequences.”
    “Get Mr. Huang on the phone.”
    “He may be at lunch,” Darryl says. “It’s 12:30 p.m. there now.”
    I level him with a glare, and Darryl dials the client and hands me his Smartphone. The one that White Enterprises provides for him.
    I massage the client’s ego and promise concessions that may or may not be in the final contract once I’ve had my legal team to vett it again, and get him off the phone in record time, since he wants to get back to his tempura, and I need to get back to a hot little number that I need to be my submissive in the worst way.
    When Darryl and I emerge from the hallway, I see the rapper tossing Keisha over his shoulder. “What the motherfuck!”
    I stalk over to them, with Darryl at my heels. “What’s wrong, Mr. White?” he asks, but I ignore my assistant and hone in on intercepting Keisha before she’s lost to me yet again. That rapper bastard is taking her out of this club over my dead body.
    “No-o, By-ron,” I hear Keisha whine. “Put me down.”
    “I’m just gon’ take you home now,” Byron says as he takes something from Darnelle and turns to leave with Keisha. I’m already into position at the door when he arrives.
    “By-ron. I don’t wanna go with you,” Keisha is still protesting.
    “Aw, fuck!” Byron says when he sees me blocking his egress.
    “I think she’s made her position clear,” I say in the hardest, no nonsense tone I’m used to using with submissives, not guys attempting to take inebriated young women from bars. Keisha peeps around the guy’s body, her mouth forming an “o” as she squints up at me.
    Byron puts her down so quickly, she loses her footing and stumbles into me. I take her arms and hold her up and look into her eyes. Just as I thought, her pupils are dilated. She’s had something other than champagne.
    “What did you give her?” I ask Captain Asshat.
    “I ain’t give her shit.” Byron denies it, but his comportment assures me he’s as guilty as sin. “Talk to that damn dyke. That’s who she was drinking with before I even got here.”
    Overhearing the rapper’s  incendiary words, Darnelle snarls at him. “Talk to this dyke about what?”
    Keisha twists out of my arms before I can stop her and decks Darnelle with a text-book right hook, then collapses on top of her.
    With eyes as big as saucers the Rapper says, “Ain’t that a bitch.”
    “What a goddamned cluster fuck,” I mutter, and wave Darryl and Brent over to help me sort this shit out.
     

 
     
    CHAPTER