Page 41 of When Death Whispers

She’s close. I can hear it in her voice, the way she continues to whimper my name over and over like a prayer—or a spell.

I fight the urge to come, willing myself to hold on, to make this last. Even if it’s a dream, even if none of this is real—I want her to fall apart in my arms first.

Then the shadows wrap around me, slick and insistent. One snakes between my thighs, curling around my balls and giving a firm squeeze.

My body snaps tight, stars bursting behind my eyelids. “Parker—fuck,” I groan, my whole body seizing as I spill inside her in one long, shuddering release. My fingers dig into her skin, anchoring me to her like she’s the only thing holding me to this world.

But I’m not alone in this. Parker cries out too, her body trembling as she crashes over the edge with me. The sound echoes into the forest, like the trees respond to it, unlike my own calls earlier, and she slumps against me, boneless and breathless.

We stay tangled like that, her cheek pressed to my chest. My arms come around her without thought, pulling her close. Protective. Possessive. Mine.

The shadows retreat slowly, sliding off our skin like smoke dispersing in the wind. I want to look for her monster—want to find the asshole who spoke—but she looks up at me just then, those ice-blue eyes full of something I don’t have words for.

A million unspoken things pass between us. A hundred questions I’m too afraid to ask. A thousand answers I don’t think I’m ready for.

Weirdest fucking dream of my life.

Realest one, too.

If this is a dream, I never want to wake up.

“Me neither,” Parker whispers.

And that’s when I realize?—

I never said it out loud.

17

I wake slowly—draggedfrom sleep like I’m rising through water. My limbs feel heavy, my mouth dry, my body sore. For a few seconds, I can’t tell if I’m in my bed or in that eerie forest. My thoughts feel scrambled, slow, like they’re fighting through fog.

My breath catches as memories crash into me, sharp and disjointed like glass shattering in reverse.

The shadows—slithering around my legs like they belonged there, cold and possessive. My monster’s voice, rasping my name with a hunger that felt both terrifying and intimate.

And thenhim.

Rad. A beast straight out of some ancient myth—all fur and muscle and horns. The way he stepped into the room like it was his by right, like he was summoned by the very panic in my chest.

The tension between him and my monster had been suffocating.

And then…

Hudson in the forest. His voice. His hands. His body below above mine, his cock inside me, his breath catching like he needed me to keep him grounded. Like I was something sacred.

God.

I sit up too fast and immediately regret it, dizzy and breathless. Was it a dream? It had to be. I mean, Rad showing up like some horned shadow savior? Hudson in a nightmare forest, touching me like I was the only thing that existed? There’s no way that was real.

But my thighs ache. My core is sore.

I reach up and touch my lips without thinking. They’re swollen.

Jesus Christ.

I’m halfway through debating whether or not I’ve officially lost my mind when the floor creaks down the hallway.

“Parker?”

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