Marked By a Stranger

Eyomi Collins promised her cousin she would stop grieving the relationship that shattered her heart after her long-term boyfriend dumped her one week ago, only to announce his engagement to someone else days later.

So, Talia offered the kind of advice only a ride-or-die favorite cousin can give. Get over him by getting under someone new. The plan was simple, download a hook-up app, find a sexy distraction, meet him at a glamorous black and gold masquerade ball and then have one night where nothing hurt. But fate or something far darker had other plans. Through velvet drapes and champagne haze, Eyomi approached the man she believed was her mystery match.

He was tall, masked and watching her with a stillness that trembled along her bones. She lets this stranger take her hand. Let him lead her into a shadowed lounge. And let him touch her in ways she didn’t realize she needed. It was intense, too intense. It was a magnetic pull that felt nothing like a rebound and everything like destiny. Only after it was over did she learn the truth. She mistook a stranger for her real date. Or so she thought.

The man she surrendered to was no stranger at all. He knew her. He remembered her. And he had been waiting patiently and obsessively since the last time they saw one another as teenagers. And now that he had found her again, he wasn’t letting go. Eyomi fled, shaken and breathless, only to feel him everywhere, watching from the edge of darkness. Even when she was heading home after her night of bliss, the night refused to end. With a reminder of him in her palm, Eyomi realized something chilling. Her rebound wasn’t an accident. It was a collision years in the making and the man she touched tonight wasn’t done with her. Not even close.