Page 13 of Beneath the Desert Bloom (Of Beasts and Bloom #1)

THE MORNING ARRIVED slowly. Pale light filtered through the curtains and landed on the bed in soft slices. The house felt hollow again, emptied of Lauren’s energy and Miso’s tiny paws. Nora could still smell the sunscreen and incense clinging faintly to the guest sheets, but the laughter had faded.

She didn’t move for a long time. Just lay still, staring at the ceiling, letting the quiet crawl into her chest.

There were no texts. No calls. No looming deadlines to pretend to care about.

Just heat, and the ache that hadn’t left her body since he touched her in the dark.

She rose slowly, legs stiff, ribs tight.

Her bare feet padded across the floor, cool against the tile.

The obsidian stone rested on the dresser where she’d left it.

She picked it up without thinking, thumb rubbing the smooth edge.

It didn’t pulse. It didn’t glow. But it felt warm, like it remembered her.

Like it remembered him.

She moved through the house like someone waiting to be interrupted.

Brushed her teeth. Made coffee. Opened a window and let the dry air in.

The map lay on the table, curled at the corners.

Its red thread traced a path that didn’t make sense on any modern topography, but it made sense to her. In a way that bypassed logic entirely.

She should’ve started walking hours ago. But something held her back.

She found herself standing in the hallway without remembering crossing the room. Her hand was on the doorknob to her old bedroom, now a room full of tapes and journals and crazy maps. She’d barely touched this room. It still smelled like old books and dust. She stepped inside.

She let herself stand in the room quietly for a moment, and then picked up a small leather-bound journal on the crowded desk. It had no date, no title. Just the worn texture of use.

She sat on the edge of the desk chair and opened it.

The desert doesn’t want obedience.

He’s not bound. He’s waiting.

The bloom has to open on its own.

Nora closed the book. Her heart thudded slow and deep in her chest.

Nora didn’t fully know what it meant, but the word bloom caught in her chest like a thorn. Not soft or pretty, not something to pluck.

Something that happens when you stop trying to control it.

She looked down at her own hands. Calloused, ink-stained, human. She didn’t feel like a bloom. She felt like a woman trying not to fall apart.

Her hand drifted unconsciously to her thigh. To the place where his fingers had ghosted across her in the dream, and tingled again when she saw him on the edge of the yard. The mark was gone, but the feeling remained, a phantom burn that pulsed low and hot in her belly.

She closed the journal and stood. Grabbed the map. The knife she found in her grandfather’s sock drawer. The water canteen. A slim flashlight, her notebook, the obsidian.

“This is a terrible idea,” she said, closing the door behind her and walking toward the horizon.

The red thread on the map vibrated in her memory like a line drawn under her skin.

She didn’t know what bloom meant. Not yet. But something inside her was already leaning toward the sun.

And when the wind shifted, brushing her cheek like a fingertip, she didn’t flinch.

She followed it.

The desert wasn’t hot yet, but it was getting there. That slow build of heat that made everything feel slightly unreal, like the landscape was melting at the edges and might reveal something else if you looked at it too long.

Nora kept her feet light on the dirt. Her backpack thumped gently with every step. The map was folded and stuffed in her back pocket, the thread burned into her memory anyway. It pulled at her like a low, magnetic hum.

The trail didn’t look like a trail. Just patches of earth slightly less unfriendly than the ones around them. The hills in the distance glimmered as if breathing.

“This is stupid,” she muttered. “Absolutely batshit. Hiking into cryptid country like I’m starring in a found footage documentary.”

But she kept going.

A sharp yucca leaf snagged the side of her arm. She cursed and kept going. There was no breeze now, just the occasional insect droning like a broken machine.

Still, she walked.

Not for answers. Not even for closure.

Because her body had decided before her mind did.

Her thighs still ached with that low throb. That tingling trace of him hadn’t faded. If anything, it felt like it had soaked deeper into her skin.

Another half mile. The terrain tilted upward. Shale crunched underfoot, unpredictable and mean. The sun climbed. Her throat dried. Sweat trickled down her spine and under her shirt, clinging like second skin.

She reached the ridge above Hollow Wash.

There, below her, was the Hollow Watcher. It hadn’t changed since she was a kid. But this was the first time she had ever felt like it was actually watching her. Like it was waiting.

She stepped, braced, stepped again. And then the ground betrayed her.

Her boot skidded sideways on loose stone. Her ankle twisted hard, white-hot pain slicing up her leg. She gasped, stumbled, and hit the ground, the wind knocked clean from her lungs, her vision blurred from the jolt.

Dust filled her mouth.

The world swam sideways.

Everything stung. Her ankle pulsed. Her palms were scraped raw. Her shoulder throbbed with that dull, echoing ache that came before bruising. She bit back a cry and rolled onto her back.

Above her, the sky was brutal and blue and far too wide.

“Fuck,” she hissed, eyes squeezed shut. “Goddamn mystical breadcrumbs leading me into a pit trap. Very divine. Very sexy.”

For a moment, she lay there. Just breathing. Just hurting.

She forced herself to sit up, teeth clenched.

Her ankle was swelling already, round and red, like something blooming just under the skin. Her vision blurred at the edges from the shock of pain and heat.

Her backpack was several feet up the slope, lying sideways like it had abandoned her mid-fall.

She pressed her palms into the dirt and dragged herself a little closer. It wasn’t enough.

She slumped back down, chest heaving.

The desert went still around her. No wind. No birds. Not even insects.

Just that too-deep silence that meant she wasn’t alone.

She closed her eyes.

And felt him.

Before he stepped into view.

Before the shadows changed shape.

Before the warmth in the air deepened into something else.

He was already there.

But the world was too bright.

Nora’s lashes fluttered against the glare of the sun, her vision strobing with colorless light.

She kept trying to swallow, but her mouth was dust. The pain in her ankle had settled into a cruel rhythm — throb, throb, throb — and every time she moved, the heat surged up through her leg and pulsed behind her eyes.

She might’ve passed out for a minute. Or more.

The desert stretched around her in waves of white and gold, the sky pinned in place like a backdrop.

Then the shadows shifted.

Nora didn’t need to open her eyes to know it was him.

But she did anyway.

He stood at the edge of the slope, partially backlit by the sun, his body outlined in a sheen of heat and shadow.

Tall. Broader than she remembered. Bark-rough skin catching light like polished wood in some places, like dark stone in others.

His hair hung in thick waves past his shoulders, wind-touched, tangled. Wild.

But it was his eyes that arrested her.

They glowed like embers that never went out.

Her breath caught.

“Asher,” she whispered. She didn’t mean to say it. It just slipped loose.

His head tilted.

“I come… when it pulls,” he said, his voice like stone cracking. Rough. As if he hadn’t used it in years.

“When the feeling roots deep.”

Nora’s breath caught, but not because of the pain. Because he’d spoken.

The silence she’d been chasing for days, dreaming of, dreading, had a voice now.

He stepped toward her, slow and deliberate. The way someone moves toward a wounded animal. Or something sacred.

Her pulse fluttered as he crouched beside her, the ground barely crunching beneath his weight. His body radiated heat. It felt magnetic. A warmth that reached out before his fingers did.

His hand hovered just above her ankle.

She flinched out of reflex, not fear.

His eyes met hers.

And then, he touched her.

Just his fingertips. Just the outer edge of her skin.

But it was enough to short-circuit her lungs.

She gasped. Heat bloomed from the point of contact, flaring up through her leg, curling low in her belly, pooling between her thighs like a second injury. One she wanted.

She wasn’t ready.

But she wanted.

He dragged his hand gently up her calf, checking the joint, the swelling. His thumb brushed her skin with the kind of pressure that made her body confuse relief with arousal.

Her head lolled back.

Pain and desire were becoming indistinguishable.

“You always come when I call,” she murmured, delirious with sun and ache. “Even when I don’t mean to.”

A faint shift in his face. A tightening at the jaw. Regret? Hunger?

He reached for her and lifted her into his arms, like she weighed nothing.

She gasped again as her side pressed against his chest. Every inch of him was hot and solid and massive. She could feel the texture of his skin through her clothes, jagged in some places, soft in others. His scent filled her nose. Earth and ash and something deep, like spice crushed in a mortar.

She held on, not because she needed to.

Because she wanted to.

He carried her effortlessly, his gait smooth, his arms strong and sure. The desert blurred around her.

She might have been dreaming.

She didn’t care.

The house appeared like an illusion, flickering through the heat, then solid again. He stepped up the porch without a sound, nudging the door open with a hand far too gentle for someone that big.

Inside, the light was dimmer. Cooler.

He laid her down on the couch with no hesitation, no clumsiness. Like he knew the shape of her body already.

Nora breathed in through her nose, chest shaking. Her ankle screamed, but the rest of her felt like it was floating.

Asher knelt beside her, hand still on her leg.

Then, he touched her face.

His knuckles grazed her cheekbone, barely there, like she’d disappear if he pressed any harder.

She turned into the touch.

His fingers slipped to the edge of her jaw, traced the line behind her ear.

The sting in her ankle faded into the background, still there, but distant now. Muted beneath the slow flood of heat that rolled through her at the feel of his hand on her skin. She felt open, like her body was pleading for him without permission.

She ached with need, her breath caught shallow in her throat. Her heart thumped like it was trying to get closer to him through her ribs.

She wanted to drag his hand lower. Just to see what would happen. Just to see if he’d still be gentle, or if he’d finally let go.

His hand moved to her collarbone, fingertips barely dragging over the ridge of it, leaving goosebumps in their wake. She felt her nipples harden beneath her shirt. Felt the swell of pressure between her legs, sharp and aching, like the ghost of a dream that hadn't fully ended.

This wasn’t a dream. It was worse. She couldn’t grind against him here, couldn’t beg, couldn’t lose herself completely.

She bit her lip, eyes fluttering shut.

She wanted more.

Not in some abstract, safe way. In a full-body please-take-me-through-the-wall way. And the worst part, or maybe the best part, was that he wasn’t even trying. His touch was careful. Chaste. But her whole body was already reacting like he’d kissed her open.

A soft sound escaped her throat, involuntary. A tiny moan. He froze.

His thumb moved to her throat, just feeling her pulse, like he could read her from the inside out.

She arched slightly. Her body reaching. Opening.

Please , she thought. Say something. Do something. Take this further.

But he didn’t.

He pulled back just enough to let the air rush between them. Just enough to let her feel the absence like a bruise.

She reached up anyway, her hand shaking, and touched his chest. Just once. Just to feel the truth of him. The heat under his skin. The thrum of something old and alive beneath her fingers.

“You’re real,” she whispered.

He didn’t answer at first.

But then, softly, like something breaking loose.

“You see me.”

And he stayed.

Later, when she drifted into sleep, she dreamed of water running through stone. Of hands parting her like petals. Of teeth at her throat. Of his mouth on her skin, so slow it was almost cruel.

And when she woke in the dim light, groggy and aching, she saw him.

Outside, crouched near the porch, watching. Still. Silent.

Waiting.

Not to be called.

Just to be near.