Seduced By The Wall Street Werewolf (Interracial Paranormal Shifter Romance BWWM) (2 page)

“Any chance you’re gonna actually talk to this one again?”

“I highly doubt it.”

“You’re such a player, man.”  He started throwing papers down on my desk.  “Anyhoo, here’s the sales figures for stock in Cisco, Apple, Microsoft, Walmart, Hewey, Dewey and Lewey.”

Some people actually consider Theo to be funny. I don't.

I looked over the reports.  The numbers looked good, for the most part.  Our sales were a little lax in some areas that I’d have to bring up at the meeting.  “Hold on,” I said, “it looks like a few pages are missing here.”

Theo rolled his eyes, and scratched at his curly mop.  “Ahh.  My new secretary must’ve left ‘em.  She’s still working out the kinks.”

“Yeah, I think you told me you had a new secretary… Zoe, right?”

“Yeah, that’s her name.  African American chick, bit of an oddball, and kind of spacey too.”

“Just make sure you get the rest of the pages from her by the meeting,” I said.

“No problem, man,” he said as he sauntered out the door.

Chapter2

Starting at a new job is never easy for a girl like me. Being African American and working in this part of town it is like they are expecting you to mess something up. So I felt more then embarrassed when I discovered the pages of sales figures I’d forgotten to give to Mr. Clarke before he went moonwalking off the head trader’s office.  I’d barely been here three days and I was already making a spectacular fool of myself.

Of all the jobs I had taken since fleeing my pack, this was quickly shaping up to be my shortest tenure, and after my week-long position waiting tables at the Lobster Shack, that was saying something.  My first day I’d gotten lost five times trying to find Mr. Clarke’s office.  Granted, the building was huge and there were people everywhere, but I still felt like a colossal loser when I finally found it. 

And the events of the following days hadn’t done much to change that feeling, either. 

When Mr. Clarke asked me for the stock info report on one company that I could no longer remember the name of I ended up giving him the wrong report.  Then I left another report I was supposed to give him in the copy room, which I didn’t realize until I’d already made it back to Mr. Clarke, allowing myself time to properly humiliate myself in front of him, and then had to traipse back to the copy room to look for it, only to find that it was gone, and spent the next twenty minutes looking for it before he finally showed up to tell me someone else had already picked up my unbearable slack and brought it to him for me.

And now, true to form, I’d gone and fucked up again.  So when he came back in, giving me a pointed and disapproving “Zoe…” all I could do was blush and bashfully hand him the pages.

“I’m sorry, sir,” I said, my eyes on the floor.

“You’ll figure out the rhythm sooner or later,” he said.  “Just make sure it’s sooner if you want to keep your job.”  And with that he went gliding back to the door that had the name “Theodore Clarke” proudly displayed in bronze on it.

Once the door shut behind him, I slumped down in my chair and buried my face in my hands.  I’d been trying so hard to stay under the radar, to not be noticed by anyone save the few I had to report to directly.  And yet lately it seemed my efforts were only drawing more attention to me, and not in a good way.

It may not have been entirely my fault, though.  I had been on edge in this place since the day I got here, and until this morning I was never quite sure why.  It was always some faint smell, coming from somewhere on this floor, that I hadn’t been able to place until just a little while ago when the source of it strode right past the door where I worked.  By now I was sure of it.

There was another wolf in this building.  On this very floor.

From the moment I realized that, I had been in a state of quiet panic.  Had they found me?  Was someone here, waiting to pounce on me, and drag me kicking and screaming back to Lawson?  I thought I’d been so careful, leaving no trace, traveling by car, by bus, by plane to keep them from tracking my scent; how had they caught up with me?

I told myself to relax.  There was no reason to assume that whomever I was smelling was from my own pack.  It could very easily just be a stray.

But once the thought had entered my head, I couldn’t get rid of it.  Images of being forcibly taken back home and facing Lawson’s leering, hateful face wouldn’t leave me, no matter how I tried to shake them.   I was plagued all at once by all the memories I’d tried for so long to get rid of; memories of him shoving my face into the dirt while he mounted me from behind, using me for his pleasure, calling me his bitch.  And when he declared that he wanted me to be his wife and bear his pups, it was like the final nail had been hammered into my coffin.  No one said no to their alpha.  I had to get out.

When Mr. Clarke emerged again, as always walking like he was waiting for disco to come back into style, I handed him the quarterly statement he would need for the sales meeting and watched him walk out, and then started contemplating my options.  I was sorely tempted to quit my job now and run, but I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions.  Doing something extreme could put more attention on me than I wanted—

—which ended up happening anyway ten minutes later when Mr. Clarke buzzed me, informing me I’d forgotten to print the extra copies of the quarterly report.  Another ugly mark on my so-far dismal record with this firm.  “I’m sorry, sir, I’ll bring them right away,” I said.

I sighed, heading for printer.  Could I have been any more of a mess if I tried?

__________________________________________

*

The morning meeting proceeded fairly normally, save for a few upsets.  Theo had the pages we needed, but it turned out his new secretary had forgotten to print extra copies of the quarterly statement to pass around.  I commented that she was off to a great start.

“She’s still new,” he shrugged.  “Cut her some slack.”

So he buzzed the instructions to her, she apologized, and we proceeded to discuss other topics until there was a knock on the door.  Someone got up to open it, and in she strode.

Whatever business I may have been concerned with discussing was forgotten immediately.

She couldn’t have been more than 26, with a dark, mocha-colored complexion and a face framed by a head of thick, frizzled hair.  She wore no makeup, and her business attire was just barely neat enough to avoid being called frumpy.  Her walk and demeanor were the epitome of awkward.  Then I noticed her scent. 

It was a scent I hadn’t smelled on a woman in years, and as soon as I caught it on her my eyes were nowhere else.

And at the same moment, she caught my scent as well.  And her attention was squarely on me.

“Thank you, Zoe,” Theo said as he got up and took the printed reports from her, and began to pass them around.

I bullshitted my way through the rest of the meeting.  I hardly listened to anything that was said, and made up answers when I was asked direct questions.  I was unable to tear my attention away from Zoe.  Officially she was supposed to return to Theo’s office in case he got a call, but instead she hung back against the door and waited.  No one seemed to notice the wallflower hanging around except me, and no one seemed to care that she was remaining consistent in not doing her job very well.

She tried to hide it by looking down at the floor, but each time my gaze turned back to her, her eyes came up again to meet mine.

When the meeting finally ended, she seemed to suddenly remember that she was supposed to be somewhere else, and made haste out the door as everyone was getting up from their seats.  I hung back as we exited the meeting room, my eyes fixed on the open door to Theo’s office where Zoe was working.  As Theo walked by me, I grabbed his arm to stop him.  “Hey, what can you tell me about that girl?”

“What, you interested in her?  You’d be the first, as far as I know.”

“Just tell me.”

“Well, there’s not much I can tell you yet.  She doesn’t really mix, if you know what I mean.  Keeps to herself, eats alone, and if you ask me, I’d guess she hasn’t been laid since Facebook was invented.  She is very uptight. Personally, I don’t think she’s gonna last.”

I think he went back to his work then.  I wasn’t watching him and I didn't care.

I somehow regained enough focus to get back to my own work too.  I made phone calls, I traded stocks; I did the job that had made me rich.  And then it got to be 1:00, when most of my coworkers were breaking for lunch and the crowd of brokers was thinning out.  I meanwhile went searching to feed a different kind of hunger.

Zoe had already left Theo’s office.  I followed her scent to one of the smaller break rooms, one usually reserved for morning coffee breaks.  It wasn’t one of the better ones, either; the coffee machine was always breaking down, and there was only a single small table with room for three people at best.  I guessed Zoe had chosen it on purpose for that very reason.  She sat alone, quietly indulging in a sandwich, which she seemed to forget about when she noticed me. 

She stared back at me over her shoulder.  For a long while, neither of us spoke.  I could see the tension in her shoulders from where I stood.

“You seem anxious,” I said.  “What are you afraid of?”

She said nothing.

I began slowly approaching her.  Instantly she began gathering up her lunch and hurrying out of her chair.  “I’m sorry, Mr. Lupis,” she said, “I’ll find somewhere else to eat.”  But as she tried to rush by me, I grabbed hold of her arm. 

She kept her eyes down, not daring to meet mine.  I paused, taking a moment to breathe in her scent, savoring it.  After so many years, to smell this kind of scent on a woman again…

“Look at me,” I softly commanded.

Slowly, she raised her eyes to me.  With a soft growl in my throat, I let her see my wolf’s eyes.  And reflexively, she revealed hers.

As soon as I saw her eyes shift from brown and white to yellow and black, I released her arm—and she bolted from the room.

Chapter3

My heart raced and I fought to catch my breath as I returned to my desk.  Okay, he wasn’t from my pack; that much was for sure.  And he was the top trader at this firm, which meant he’d been here for years, whereas I was the newbie.  Obviously he didn’t come here looking for me.

But what if Lawson knew him?  It was possible.  What if he was telling Lawson where I was right now?

What if I was becoming a paranoid wreck?

I had damn near passed out from panic when I walked into that meeting room and caught his scent, and realized that he was right there, looking at me.  If I’d been thinking clearly, I knew I should have gotten out of there as soon as I handed Mr. Clarke those copies.  Technically I was supposed to do that anyway.  And yet I’d been unable to move.  I couldn’t stop looking at him, seeing him watching me.

When I realized he wasn’t from my pack I’d started to relax a little… and then he tracked me down to that break room.  And he grabbed me like that.  And when he showed me his real eyes, and I let my mask slip and showed him mine, I felt certain I’d been caught.

But now that I’d had time to rationalize things, I was starting to calm down.  It was probably just chance that he was here, not part of a search for me.  Contrary to what was always in my nightmares, Lawson’s reach couldn’t extend this far.

The day proceeded like any other after that.  For a few hours at least.  I took Mr. Clarke’s calls, I typed reports and printed documents he needed.

And then Mr. Clarke came to my desk and said, “Hey, Zoe, Marco just called me, says he wants to see you in his office.”

I fought to swallow the lump in my throat.  I should have expected this.  “A-all, alright.”  I slowly got up on shaky legs and headed for the door.

“My advice: hold onto your panties with that guy,” he said to my back.  “Just sayin’.”

I didn’t exactly know the full layout of the floor yet, but finding the head trader’s office wasn’t difficult; I just had to track his scent.  Walking through the door, that was the difficult part.  But I took a breath, bit my lip and knocked.

“Come in, please.”

I turned the knob and in I strode.  Mr. Lupis was seated on his leather sofa in the middle of the long, luxurious office, clearly waiting for me.  I shut the door behind me, and stood before him with as much composure I could muster.  “You wanted to see me, Mr. Lupis?”

He cocked his head.  “You don’t have to be so formal with me, Zoe.  Come on, sit down.”

I hesitated, and took a seat as far from him as the sofa would allow.

“Why are you being so timid?” he asked.  “I never expected to find another one of us in this whole city, let alone my own office.  We’re two of a kind here; shouldn’t we act like it?”

I paused, not sure what to say, before I finally let my professional etiquette slip and said, “What do you want with me?”

He looked a little caught off-guard by that question.  “Letting me buy you a drink tonight would be a start,” he said.  “You’re the first of our kind I’ve met in years; I’d like to know more about you.”