Yes, Masters (Book 2 of Desire's Den)

Chapter 35 - Gideon

I was agitated. There wasn't another way to describe the restlessness I felt as I stared at the clock, willing it to move faster. I'd never looked forward to the nightclub opening, until now. Emma was doing something to me, that was for damn sure.

Emma was beneath my skin, crawling up the bloodstream and making her way to my heart. This obsession I had with her was both unwelcome...and somehow not. In her presence, I can't help but act like a lovesick fool, and I couldn't stand not being able to see her whenever I wanted. It was more like a need than a want, really.

That woman had gotten my head all twisted and I couldn't think straight. I thought I'd known what obsession was the second we met Emma, but distance had only made it worse. All I could think about was how she was doing, what she was doing, where she was at. I wish I could say I got a break from it when I slept, but that would've been false. My obsession for her ran deep; it reached my dreams as easily as it surrounded my thoughts while I was awake. I didn't fucking like it. Not one bit. I didn't like not having control, it messed me up.

She'd looked troubled yesterday, and not just because of the guy harassing her. There was something more to it than that, I just couldn't put my finger on it, and it pissed me right off not knowing what it was. Her lie about the security measures she'd taken had been just that, a lie. Callan had called his trusted PI, and sure enough, the last break-in that had happened in her neighborhood was a month ago, and not last week like she'd told us. She was hiding something from us, and we intended to find out what it was. Our girl had another thing coming if she thought we would allow her to keep her secrets away from us. We'd already learned that secrets should not be withheld, but we wouldn't let her learn the same lesson.

We had given her our word that we would give her space, but her lie only managed to make us draw closer to her, like wolves protecting their prey from other predators.

Callan's and Mateo's caller ID showed up a spit second before my phone rang. With a scowl, I accepted the call.

"I had a little talk with Emma recently." Mateo jumped right into it, taking control of the conversation. I waited on Callan, letting him do the talking.

"What did she say?" Callan asked.

"She told me she wants us to stop send her any more gifts—"

"The fuck we will," I barked. Did she really think we'd stop sending her gifts when she'd taken from us all other ways to communicate with her?

"That doesn't sound right," Callan commented, both of them ignoring my outburst. It didn't matter though, I knew they disliked it as much as me, but I had less problems to actually show the dislike. "She loved our gifts."

"That was what I thought as well," Mateo agreed. "Hell, she'd been so thankful for the gifts, and now she suddenly doesn't want them anymore? She also mentioned she needed more space than she'd originally thought she needed—" My scowl deepened. "—but the way she said it...it didn't seem like that was the actual problem. You guys noticed anything differently about her?"

"When I called Kevin today about the harassment, he had no idea it about it. He's worried too. Said she doesn't answer her phone anymore and won't hang out with him either," Callan informed us.

Why should I care about her not hanging out with him? Only, I did. It didn't sound like Emma to avoid her friend like that. From what I'd gathered, they were pretty close, and it didn't make any sense why she was distancing herself from him.

"She's been jumpy at work," I added, thinking back to two weeks ago when she shattered the bottle of tequila after a customer tried to get her attention. "Mark had noted down that she rarely makes mistakes, but now she's mixing drinks wrong, and mess up the orders."