Crown of Sins - Chaelisa

-Chapter Seven-

*Roseanne's POV*

It doesn't matter how many days it's been since Lisa was last here, I can't get the smell of her out of my office.

It's like she's entwined herself in the damn fibers of my expensive rug, coated the metallic foil wallpaper with whatever makes her, her. And it's annoying as fuck.

Her cologne, her sweat, her...I don't even know what, has been stuck in my nose since she was last here. It's so distracting. My meetings with Caleb, or Devin, or even Jennie have gone exactly nowhere in the last week.

Inevitably, after a few minutes, I stop listening to their words as images of Lisa's muscled limbs, sweating and entangled, with mine take over everything else. Not that it's a bad daydream. But I have shit to do. Shit that used to feel really important. Shit that should still be important. More important than an entitled asshole and how she'd—or rather how I'd—feel with her face between my legs...

Damn it.

I jerk, pulled from the thoughts distracting me from whatever I'd been distracted about before that, as a piercing sound, annoyingly sharp, rings out through my entire office. The sound is loud, but not loud enough to make my reaction even close to acceptable. Thank fuck I'm alone.

The Princess would lose so much cred if anyone saw the many inches I lift up off my chair, and the weird flailing my hands do. All because my phone rings.

"Yeah?" I snap into the line, once I have it to my ear.

"Sorry to interrupt your mid-day spank bank review sesh," Jennie says with as much gravity as she can muster. But I hear the giggles just itching to burst from her throat. And if it were anyone else saying it, I'd hit the roof.

"Fuck off," I tell her with a roll of my eyes. "What do you want?" I try to get her back on track, though that can be one of the hardest things—worse than trying to get me to do something I don't want to do—when she's determined. Or on a roll.

"Jokes aside, you need to get your ass down here," she says, all flippancy gone from her. Which tells me more about what I need to know than her words.
I hang up while standing, needing to do everything at once.

Caleb must hear the change in my tone or the slamming of my chair as it flies back and hits the wall, because he's in the doorway before I have time to suck in a breath and call him.

"Jennie needs us downstairs," I tell him, and his jaw hardens around the information.

He reaches out an arm to me in answer, strong and silent, and holds my hand as we rush down the back stairs to the club.

As we push through the dressing room—Caleb's eyes staying straight ahead instead of on the half-naked, and fucking gorgeous, bodies around us—I wish I'd asked for more information.

"Let me go first," Caleb says, though it's more like asking my permission before he maneuvers in front of me anyway. I nod, because it's the smart thing to do, even if I don't want to look anything but in control.

I guess sometimes that means letting others do things for me, help me. You know, delegating and all that bullshit.

So Caleb leads the way, but I'm close enough to be stepping on the back of his boots. No regrets. As long as I don't trip him that is. But when we come out from the back, at first nothing seems out of place or even on the edge of an issue.

The first glance gives me nothing. Caleb tenses before I do as we walk past the stage and full tables of mouth-breathing daddies who've just put their little kiddies to bed and their still obviously single friends egging them on so they aren't the creeps here alone, toward the bar.