Page 6 of When Death Whispers

Everything goes black.

No warning. No flicker. Just… gone.

The light. The hum. The safety.

Gone.

My breath catches.

Fuck. Shit. No.

I shoot to my feet so fast my chair clatters to the floor. My salad container hits the ground with a wet thump. Panic claws up my throat like a living thing, and I fumble to unlock my phone, but my fingers won’t cooperate. I can’t even remember my passcode.

And then?—

THERE YOU ARE, MY SWEET SNOW PEA.

The words aren’t spoken aloud, but they echo—through my chest, my head, my bones. My phone slips from my hand, forgotten.

I freeze as something brushes my cheek.

Not skin. Not fabric.Wrong.Cold and smooth, like silk pulled from ice water.

It drags along the path Hudson’s fingers traced minutes earlier—from my ear down to my jaw before gripping my chin. My breath stutters, body locked in place.

The shadows don’t just reach for me.

Theyretracehim.

Each touch Hudson gave me, my monster mimics.

My skin burns where it should be numb. Heat and dread coil together inside me, clashing and twisting until I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.

A laugh follows—low and cruel.

“You’ve been hiding in the light,”hehisses, his voice thick with hunger. “But Ifeltyou. Flushed. Wanting.”

The air thickens as he moves closer—though I see nothing, I feel him everywhere.

“You let him touch you,” my monster sneers. “You wanted it. You liked it.”

The shadows coil around my calves, slide up my thighs—slow, deliberate, greedy. They curl around the curve of my waist, right where Hudson’s hand had lingered.

Then they surge between my legs—hot and cold at once, sharp and smooth,furious.

A gasp escapes me. Not just from fear—but from something darker.

Something shameful.

My knees wobble. A pulse of electricity races up my spine, unwanted but impossible to ignore. Terror floods me. But beneath it, that lingering heat warps into something monstrous.

Just as the darkness threatens to crest—just as my body betrays me?—

A beam of light slices through the darkness like a knife.

“Parker? You okay?”

Hudson’s voice cuts through the shadows like air after drowning.

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