Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
NELL
Iwoke up at five-forty-three in the morning in a state of profound sexual frustration due to one cock-keeping Magnus Blackwood. My best friend B.O.B. hadn't been enough to soothe me. The device kept buzzing when all I wanted was a growl.
What the hell was going on with me? I never got hung up over a guy. Except Magnus wasn't a guy. He was a wolf in a designer suit. Maybe he put me under some kind of thrall.
Wait, was that vampires? Hold up, were vampires real too?
I got up and made coffee, unwilling to deal with my over-sensitized lady parts nor my overactive imagination. Maybe I was still in shock from finding out that werewolves were real? How long did shock last?
With a few sips of coffee in me, my brain calmed down.
Just a bit. I stood at the windows of my apartment with my mug and looked at the city doing its pre-dawn thing — the garbage trucks, the early delivery vans, the handful of runners who treated 6AM as a reasonable hour to exist outdoors — and I let his words replay in my head.
Hopefully that got the need for sex out of your system and you'll get back to work.
Fucker.
No, actually, he wasn't a fucker. He was a coward. That had been the move of a man who was afraid.
He wanted me. He had wanted me since the cabin. He wanted me right now—wherever he was. The problem for me was that I wanted him too. The problem for him was I was going to do something about it.
But what?
I didn't have his phone number. Not to his private line. Though I could get it. But that felt desperate. And I was too cute for that.
Speaking of cute, I could send him a naughty picture to his company email. I didn't fear he'd share it. The man operated by a code; that was clear. But then he'd have something in his spank bank, and I'd wouldn't have a guarantee that he'd come over and spank me.
I put down my coffee cup. I was going to need a different approach. Instead of working through the office problems, I set my mind to figuring out how to make the boy I liked pay attention to me. It would start with a killer outfit.
Not a power suit. The power suit was armor, and armor was for days when I needed to remind a room who I was. Today I needed something that reminded a specific person of what was underneath my clothes.
I pulled out a little red dress. Put it back. Too obvious.
I pulled out a skirt: black, fitted, falling just below the knee with a kick pleat at the back that was technically modest and practically dangerous.
The kind of skirt that behaved itself when you were standing still but not when you walked.
I paired it with a fitted black turtleneck that was thin enough to move with me rather than around me.
The heels were simple, pointed, and made my legs look like they started somewhere around my collarbone.
I pressed my fingers to my mother's claw necklace for luck. Magnus Blackwood had told me to get back to work. I intended to be very, very good at my job today.
The problem was simple. Magnus had drawn a line.
The line needed to be made untenable. Not by me pushing against it directly.
I had tried that in the elevator, and while the results had been personally satisfying, they had also resulted in a dismissal speech and a closed car door.
Direct pressure was not the move. Magnus was too disciplined for that.
"Your nine o'clock is here," Priya said a few hours later. "It's a new client consultation."
I looked at my calendar. The meeting had been booked through the standard intake process, a consultancy inquiry that had come through vetted sources. I had glanced at the brief and set it aside on Monday. It was a legitimate enough business, the kind of account that fit our restructuring work.
"Send him in."
The door opened. The first thing I clocked was the oppressive feel of the werewolf bodyguards outside my door.
Their scent of deep forest and fresh earth wafted into my office.
Layered on top of it was the scent of warm grass, dry earth and…
sandalwood? I looked up. It was the man from the bar with the expensive watch and charming smile.
"You must really want that drink," I said.
He laughed — a genuine one, surprised out of him.
"I'd take the drink. But I'm much more interested in doing business with you.
" He crossed to the desk and extended his hand.
"Darius Omondi. I represent a logistics consultancy out of Nairobi.
The Omondi Group. We've been looking for the right partner stateside for about two years, and think Odhiambo I knew what that felt like.
It went a step beyond impressed. He looked like a man who had moved his chess pieces on the board and found a queen.
"That is a precise summary of a problem I have been trying to articulate to my board for eighteen months. "
"The solution is a unified US distribution anchor," I said.
"One import license, one brand identity, one partner with existing relationships in the premium food service sector.
" I pulled my legal pad toward me and began writing.
"The Fang Dynasty alone would absorb a significant percentage of your AA grade at a price point that makes the London broker arrangement look embarrassing.
Beyond that, there are fourteen premium restaurant groups in the tristate area that are currently sourcing inferior product because nobody has introduced them to yours. "
"And Odhiambo and Associates can do this."
"Odhiambo, Blackwood and Associates," I said, without looking up from my notes.
"Of course." His tone signaled he didn't think he said the wrong thing.
I finished the preliminary framework and turned the pad toward him.
It was rough — a first draft, the skeleton of something that would take a week to build properly — but it showed the structure clearly.
The unified import license, the distribution channels, the brand positioning, the projected margin improvement over the London arrangement.
Darius studied it for a long moment. "You drafted this in twenty minutes"
"I'll have a full proposal to you by end of week. It will include a restructured pricing model, proposed distribution partners, and a three-year growth projection." I capped my pen. "Assuming your board is prepared to move on the London broker arrangement."
"The board will do what I tell them." He said it with the flat certainty of a man who was not boasting, just stating the operational reality of his position.
I recognized the register. I used it myself. "End of week then."
He closed his portfolio. The meeting was technically concluded. Neither of us moved.
"May I ask you something that has nothing to do with tea?" he said.
I raised an eyebrow. "You may ask."
"Your heritage. Where is your family from?"
I gave him the answer I gave everyone. "West Africa."
Darius made a sound that was not quite a scoff. "You know Africa is a continent, not a country."
He had said it with the exasperation of someone who had been watching Americans flatten an entire continent into a single vague category his whole life.
I did it deliberately, had been doing it since college; the strategic vagueness of a woman who didn't want to explain her complicated, incomplete family history to people who would inevitably ask follow-up questions she couldn't answer.
West Africa ended conversations. It was a door I could close.
Standing in front of a man who was himself from the continent in question, I could not close it so easily when we were standing on the same side.
"My mother was Ghanaian. She came over when I was very small."
Darius nodded slowly. He was looking at my face with a focus that had shifted from professional to something more searching. "And your father?"
"I didn't know him."
His eyes moved over my features. Not the way men's eyes usually moved over my features. This was careful observation. Like a man looking for something lost and finding it.
"Your bone structure, your features." A pause. "They are very Kenyan."
Something moved in my chest, like a key turning in a lock. It was a memory. My mother's voice: Your father's people were from Kenya, baby. From the highlands. Mountain people. It was one of the few times she'd spoken of him.
"I don't know much about my father's family," I said carefully. I didn't tell him that my grandmother was Kenyan and had married a Ghanian man. Even though Darius Omonodi and I were on the same side of a closed door, I wasn't going to open a window into my soul for this stranger.
Darius opened his mouth to say more, but the door to my office opened without a knock. Magnus Blackwood filled the frame.
He was in a dark suit, no tie. His gaze raked over me.
Then turned to Darius with an expression that was technically neutral and was actually not.
His jaw was set. Amber bled into the brown of his eyes, the pupils doing something that was not quite human.
He was inhaling, the way a dog would before he decided where to bite. Or lift his leg and pee.
"Mr. Blackwood, I'm in a meeting."
Magnus said nothing. Only glared at Darius.
Darius rose from his chair with the unhurried ease of a man who was not remotely intimidated by the energy currently filling my office doorway. Darius was tall enough that the eye contact with Magnus was level rather than deferential.
"Darius Omondi," he said, extending his hand with smooth confidence. "The Omondi Group, Nairobi. I've been discussing a distribution partnership with Ms. Odhiambo." A beat. "She's extraordinary, by the way. You're lucky to have her."
Magnus shook his hand. The handshake lasted longer than was professional. "Magnus Blackwood."
"I know who you are," Darius said pleasantly.
Magnus was still inhaling in that slow, deliberate way. Darius was perfectly composed and at ease while a hidden animal took his measure.
"I'll leave you to your afternoon," Darius said, turning back to me.
He picked up his portfolio. Then he reached out, took my hand, and bent over it with an Old World formality that nobody had ever deployed at me in my professional life.
His lips grazed my knuckles. "I look forward to your proposal, Ms. Odhiambo. "
And with that, he walked past Magnus with a cordial nod and was gone.
I picked up my pen. Pointedly not looking at Magnus.
"Did you need something, Mr. Blackwood? I'm working."