The Venture Capitalist

by EnRose, LaVie

  “Haven’t you gone to lunch yet? Jorge just called for you. Says he has a table at Giordano’s.”

  Then she turns her attention to me, ramping up her billion-megawatt smile from braces Daddy’s money probably bought when she was an adolescent, and hair too blonde and dark at the root to be natural. I can tell by the way she’s looking at me, she’s about to pounce. Keisha tries to pawn me off on the barracuda.

  “If there’s anything else you need, Mr. White, Ms. Campbell will be happy to help you.” There is a hint of reluctance in her voice, I’ll give it to her.

  The phone rings and Emily holds up one finger. “Just a second, Mr. White, I’ll be right with you,” she says to me, and then before she dives for the phone to Keisha. “You. Go to lunch.”

  “Is Jorge your boyfriend?” Suddenly, I feel like I might have wasted my time pursuing Ms. Beale. Why didn’t it occur to me that she could be attached? Was my ego so colossal, I couldn’t see that coming a mile away? A young woman as attractive as she is was bound to be in a relationship. I could kick myself. But wait. She seems befuddled by my question.

  “No. He’s my cousin.”

  “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  “Not at the moment. Getting KSR up and running has been a priority. And it’s not like there’s been anyone intriguing enough for me to make the sacrifice.”

  The barracuda seems to be winding up her call, so I need to take what might be the only opportunity I have to set up another meeting. “I might have been too hasty in my decision on Friday, Ms. Beale. Would you be interested in taking another meeting to negotiate terms that will be acceptable to us both? And there is that other matter I’d like to discuss, as well.”

  Her eyes narrow and I can practically see her thoughts turning in that pretty little head.

  “How about we meet Tuesday morning? Jada will be back in town, and her input would mean a more substantive discussion, business-wise.”

  “You can’t meet tomorrow?”

  “I have work here and at the studio.”

  “How about Thursday or Friday night?”

  “I close again Thursday night and Friday I have plans.” Her next statement demonstrates to me that she’s gotten her negotiation legs firmly under her now. “I have to give you fair warning. I’ll be discussing the business venture with Princess Danai as a possible investor.”

  “This isn’t an unexpected turn of events, given the way our last meeting ended,” I say. Then I raise an eyebrow and throw the backhanded question she threw at me when we met before. “You’re not gay, are you, Ms. Beale?”

  She laughs. No doubt remembering. Her laughter even arouses me. “No, Mr. White, I’m not.”

  “One never knows…”

  She seems to gather her thoughts before she says, “Thank you for reconsidering about the studio. If Jada had taken the meeting, I’m sure there would’ve been a different outcome the first time.”

  Her gratitude is palpable. I know I was hard on her at the meeting, if for no other reason than to vett her for my own nefarious purposes. She seems pleased that I’ve reconsidered, despite another opportunity that has fallen into her lap.

  She thinks this is the last she’ll see of me until Monday, but I know exactly where she’s going Friday night, and I’m going to be there if for no other reason than to pluck her from the competitive Darnelle’s clutches.

  “Call me on Monday. We can agree on a time to meet then.” I give her one of the cards I keep in my wallet. “My card. You’ll need to call before six. My driver, Moses, is prompt. My cell number is also there if you miss me at the office.”

  “Okay,” she says and turns to walk away.

  “Oh, and Keisha?” I use her first name for the first time.

  “Yeah?” She answers without hesitation.

  “I’m not altogether sure we’d be discussing the project any further if Ms. Jameson had taken the first meeting with me.” I flash her my most winsome smile as her manager sidles up to me with dollar signs and lust in her eyes. Ms. Campbell has nothing I want, and I will dismiss her handily after making my purchases. The gorgeous brunette in the bright red suit has captured all of my imagination for now.

  Fencing with my twin Nathan on Saturday morning does not have its usual result. He beats me easily, but he’s too competitive to believe that his skill alone produced this outcome.

  “What’s with you today? Your lunges are all over the place, which is how you usually beat me.” Nate peels off his mask, and wipes the sweat from his brow with a sleeve.

  I’d taken off my mask at the peak of my frustration, the moment he’d scored the winning point. I grab a pristine white towel from the cabinet which Mrs. Naven, my housekeeper, keeps well-stocked, and throw my brother one. He catches it as effortlessly as he does the basketballs lobbed at him when he’s doing what he does best with the Chicago Buffaloes.

  “Even at my worse, you’ve been no Tim Morehouse today,” Nathan says after wiping his face and now his sopping wet hair with the towel.

  “Then you should be pleased with this win.” I discard my towel in the bin and grab two waters out of the mini-fridge.

  Nathan takes a swig from the bottle I hand him, and then leans back against the bar on his elbows. “If you know me at all brother, you know damn well I’m more competitive than that.”

  I shrug and drink half the water in my own bottle. I was decidedly on edge. Keisha Beale has been on my mind a considerable part of most of my days since I’d shown up at her job a few days before. I’d called Nathan to fence with me during the week because I needed a way to take the edge off.

  Darnelle would have gone into the Grotto with me if I’d asked, but she would not be particularly happy about doing that if she knew how serious I was about pursuing Keisha Beale. She’d made Keisha the prize in one of her competitions she’s so fond of having with me, so she was off the table until one of us won, definitively.

  “Sorry to disappoint you by not whipping your ass as soundly as I usually do.”

  “I’m not complaining. I just want to know where your head is at.”

  I think about that for a moment. I wasn’t sure at all where my head was, because for the first time in a year, I’d targeted someone for my submissive who might be off-limits to me. That didn’t set well with me at all.

  “I’m considering taking on a new submissive,” I say. “Without going into any detail, the process has been rather difficult this time.”

  “How so?” Nathan asks.

  “Darnelle’s got it into her head that she wants this woman, too, so I’m having to work harder than I’ve ever worked to acquire her, so to speak.”

  “Is she gay?”

  “No, she’s not, but you know Darnelle. She thinks she can turn anyone.”

  Nathan grins. “I don’t know then, brother. You might lose out to the almighty tongue this time.”

  I drain my water bottle as if I’m ignoring him, and then I snap him hard with my towel. He rushes me and we fall, tumbling on a convenient mat, wrestling until one of us cries “uncle” like we did when we were kids.

  I put all thoughts of the winsome Ms. Beale out of my mind and concentrate on making my brother concede defeat.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Darnelle aka Princess Danai scowls when she sees me headed toward her prime cordoned off VIP area at Wicked. I’m so heavily invested in this establishment, one might say I own it, so she shouldn’t be surprised to see me. She’s in full regalia, wearing the attire her fans are used to seeing her in, which I abhor. Especially the over-the-top mouthpiece, which I happen to know she hates also.

  One of her hangers-on unlatches the velvet rope and allows me to enter her domain.

  “You told me you were too busy to make my performance tonight.” As per usual, when I’m within hearing distance, she ditches the vernacular.

  I shrug. “I’m due a meeting with, Brent, so I figured I’d kill two birds with one stone.” Brent Atkins, the general manager, hopes to own the place outrigh
t in about five years, if he continues to stay in the black.

  Darnelle narrows her eyes. “Or maybe you’re here because you know Keisha’s going to be here tonight.”

  Nonchalantly, I take the seat next to her. What Darnelle doesn’t know is that I’ve already seen and talked to Ms. Beale since she shared her intention of pursuing her with me. I don’t show my hand, because it’s none of her damn business why I’m here. It’ll just make her try even harder to woo Keisha because she knows I want her. It wouldn’t be the first time Darnelle has done this. She loves the idea of competing with me for women, as if the very act of doing so will win back what she gave to me long before she understood why being with men didn’t do it for her.

  I goad her, as I am prone to do. “Afraid she’ll pick the dick over the tongue?”

  “Don’t knock the tongue. I know the female body better than any man.”

  “Which may be true, but you can’t fill it like a man.”

  “That’s what strap-ons are for.”

  “Cheap imitation.”

  “Asshat,” she hisses. Then retreats into people-watching, also known as ignoring me. This love-hate relationship we’ve had since grade school amuses me to no end, and I’m sure Darnelle gets her kicks out of it as well. We would each go to our deaths before admitting it, though.

  Brent joins us after few minutes, and I grill him about the club, the financials specifically. Darnelle continues to ignore me, interacting freely with her entourage. Within a half-hour, I’m bored off my keister and I’m almost at the point of calling my weekend car service, when she strolls into the room.

  My skin prickles when Ms. Beale enters VIP, which annoys me, because it usually takes months for me to be this in tune with a submissive, let alone a woman I haven’t even fucked yet. I pretend not to see her, because her skittishness has been proven by her avoidance of me for almost a week, my unannounced visit to her work notwithstanding. She is a vision in a figure-enhancing purple dress this time.

  When a woman has assets like hers, not flaunting them would be downright sinful. Her hair is down in what seems to be her natural curl. I can’t wait for the chance to hold that mane while I take her from behind. Shit. Where is she going?

  Apparently, she’s seen me. Thankfully, Darnelle hasn’t seen Keisha, because she will call her over, and I’m not ready to approach her. Yet. If this goes as planned, Darnelle will make her move, then I’ll swoop in like Keisha’s knight in glittering armor, because this woman needs to be fucked. For my purposes, she needs to be flogged, cropped, bound and fucked, and not in that particular order. At this point, I’ll take it however, it comes.

  I breathe easier when I see she’s found a seat at the bar. Now to make a brief exit until Darnelle scares the living shit out of her with her ham-handed seduction routine. I turn to Brent.

  “I’d like to take a look at your cash-flow reports for the past few months,” I say. “That would save me a trip over here in the next couple of weeks.”

  “Sure,” he says, forever eager to impress the hand that feeds him. He stands and I follow him to the door at the end of the bar closest to us, which leads into the offices.

  It seems Ms. Beale is telling guy number three or four to piss off and doesn’t notice when I slip out of the room with Brent. She’ll get another offer soon enough from a celebrity whose music she’s no doubt grown up listening to and if she’s as uncompromisingly heterosexual as I believe she is, that pick up will go over like a lead balloon.

  I gave Brent’s paperwork a brief once-over, then checked the markets in several countries before deciding I’d given Darnelle enough rope to hang herself. I leave the sound-proof office area and re-enter the VIP lounge.

  Darnelle is pouring champagne for herself, Keisha, and another guy I don’t recognize, but who’s dressed like Danai, so he must be a rapper. His body language indicates he’s interested in Keisha; as in, he wants to fuck her. This woman is like a garden of flora in full bloom and all the bees are interested in her pollen. I’m putting a stop to this shit right now.

  “Ms. Beale, fancy seeing you here,” I say, enunciating the syllables distinctly. The new guy frowns when he realizes I’m staking a claim. Keisha looks as if she’s a deer in proverbial headlights, before she relaxes and counters back.

  “Yeah, fancy that.” Her response is vaguely familiar, as if she’s borrowed it from somewhere that I can’t recall. If the book or movie doesn’t involve numbers, I probably wouldn’t remember it anyway.

  Her posture changes upon my arrival, and as she looks up at me with an emboldened stare, my eyes are drawn to her nipples beading through that goddamn purple dress.

  Our eyes duel as they have been wont to do since we met merely a week ago. Rapper guy hands me a glass of champagne, and while it’s not my preferred brand, I take it and have a seat, because I’ll be damned if he’s going to horn in and steal away this woman I’ve been obsessing over for a solid week.

  I move to the edge of my chair and address Keisha. “I’d like to have a word with you in private after you finish your drink. I still have something that belongs to you since our early attempts to connect with you to effect its return weren’t successful.”

  She fires back shaking her head, “You shouldn’t have gone to any trouble. I’ve replaced all my personal property that 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 FIVE

  I knock softly on the door of my bedroom where Mrs. Naven and I settled Keisha in last evening. She may be up and around by now and I wouldn’t want to startle her.

  “Come in.” I hear a huskier voice than the one I’m accustomed to through the door. Unless she’s changed genders overnight, I’d hazard to guess this is her post-sleep voice.

  The bedside lamp illuminates the room, and I take in her form from waist up without sweeping my eyes greedily over her body as any man who appreciates a beautiful woman would. Her hair forms a veritable cloud around her head. In my experience with women, I know that if I react to it, it’ll make her self-conscious.

  Besides, who am I to talk? My hair is slick with sweat, and my fencing whites need laundry attention. I should’ve taken a shower before checking in on her, but I couldn’t wait. I don’t recall being this anxious about anything or anyone since my mother was alive. She’d experienced hell on earth, but modern medicine had kept her alive beyond her original prognosis; and in my selfishness, I still wanted her alive despite the agony she endured from the cancer.