Page 12 of One Night Stand

Chapter Five

TARA

THE NEXT MORNING, TARA found herself still in Declan’s room, with the same ugly gray sheets and the same bare white walls. Her head was pounding, the feeling of a thousand migraines mixed together into one deadly concoction. She had dealt with hangovers before, the worst when she took eight tequila shots on an empty stomach at a frat party during her college days, but this? This was so much worse, as if a truck had smashed into her and shattered her body into a million pieces.

She rubbed her forehead with her hand, her fingers moist and sweaty as she made her way out of bed, the bedsheet wrapped around her, and into the bathroom.

“Declan?” she called out, washing her hands in the sink and splashing droplets of water over her face to wake herself up.

But the apartment remained silent, nothing but the sound of honking cabs outside.

“Ugh, I think I’m gonna be sick,” she said quietly, turning her back to the door and hurling everything she had inside her straight into the toilet bowl. “Ugh,” she said again, grabbing a towel off the rack and wiping her mouth.

She walked back into his room, trying to regain her composure and sober up before she walks out the door and probably collides with a truck. When she got to his doorway, she tripped on a wire and fell onto the floor, awaking his computer… with the monitor showing none other than Tara Bardot in a lime green bikini.

“What the fuck?” she whispered.

She tried to unlock his computer, to see what other dark secrets he was hiding, but twenty-six passwords later, she was still shit out of luck. And that’s when she noticed a photo sticking out of the left drawer of his desk, a photo with a familiar print, similar to her designer wedding dress.

She pulled open the drawer and fished it out. It was a picture of her and Rowan on their wedding day, only, his face had been cut out and replaced by Declan’s. Vomit stewed in her stomach and rose up into her mouth, the acid burning her throat as it traveled. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. This man, this deliciously gorgeous man she had only just met for a night of fun, was… was obsessed with her.

Terrified, her hands shaking, she rummaged through the rest of the drawer, finding piles upon piles of photos of herself, from her social media posts to her streams to her everyday life. Hell, she even found a picture of herself sitting on a plane with Rowan, wearing the fluorescent pink tracksuit she wore when they took that trip to Maui.

“Oh, god…,” she whispered, dropping the photos from her hand.

He wasn’t only obsessed with her; he was stalking her.

“Looking for something?” A voice startled her, and she jumped. It was the devil himself.

“Uh… no, not at all,” she stuttered. “Listen, last night was super, but I really have to get going.”

She slammed the pictures back into the drawer and grabbed her clothes off the floor, not even bothering to dress herself as she made her way through the doorway.

She should’ve known he wasn’t going to let her go that easily.

“What’s the rush, darling? Just last night, you were screaming my name so loud I thought my neighbors were going to call the cops, and now, you’re trying to leave?” He pouted. “And here I was thinking you liked me.”

“I-I-I do,” she stuttered, digging for words she could say to get her out of this alive. “I-I do like you, a lot, actually. I just have to get to a very important meeting right now.” She flashed him a smile. “How about we meet up later? Dinner?”

He thought about it, his fingers playing with the facial hair on his chin. “Or…,” he began. “You could skip your meeting, and we can spend all day in bed. Tell you what, I’ll even cook us spaghetti with fresh crab meat for dinner tonight. I know it’s your favorite.”

“H-H-How did you know that? I never told you what my favorite dish is.”

He shrugged, unfazed by her surprise. “Just a lucky guess. Doesn’t take much for soulmates to figure each other out.”

Tara felt drops of sweat drip down her back. She knew she had to get the hell out of this place, but Declan wasn’t going to just allow it without a fight. She needed a plan, an excuse, something to let someone know that she was in trouble.

Ashley.

She threw a fake smile over at him, dropping the sheet she still had wrapped around her naked body, and grazed her fingers against his shoulder.

“You’re right, Declan, sweetie, totally right. I’d love to stay here with you, spend all day in bed eating ice cream and watching movies. Sounds like a dream.” She leaned up and gave him a peck on the cheek. “How about you take your clothes off, I’ll cancel my meeting, and then I’ll join you in bed? Just the two of us.”

“Now that’s what I’m talking about.”

As Declan quickly stripped the garments off his body, his groin enlarged, and the muscles of his upper thighs protruded. Tara forced her eyes away in search for her phone.

“C’mon, where is it?”

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