Page 17 of Beneath the Desert Bloom (Of Beasts and Bloom #1)

THE COFFEE TASTED wrong again the next morning.

It tasted…weird. Like it had absorbed some of the emotional residue clinging to the kitchen walls.

She added a little sugar and took another sip. Nope. Still off.

Nora set the mug down and stared out the window. The yard looked like a still from a movie: golden light, long shadows, nothing moving. Peaceful. Untouched.

A perfect scene for a mental breakdown.

She didn’t expect to see Asher standing there. But that didn’t stop her from checking.

She scanned the porch, the hills, the trees. Just in case he’d decided to materialize out of guilt. Or realized it was rude to ghost someone after going down on them.

No such luck.

The ache from yesterday was still there. Worse now. Like it had burrowed deeper, hooked itself to her bones.

She scratched her arm. Tingling. Again.

Nerves, she told herself. Hormones. Too much caffeine. Maybe a hangover from… orgasms? Was that a thing?

It had to be something explainable. She refused to be one of those women who had sex with a man once and immediately started rearranging her worldview to accommodate it.

Even if that man had bark for skin and glowed in the dark.

She wandered the house like a cat waiting to be fed by someone who was never coming home.

Eventually, her feet took her to the hallway.

The door to her old room was closed.

She stood in front of it for a long moment, staring like it might whisper something.

Then she opened it.

The desk was still covered in notebooks and tapes, cluttered with the chaotic logic of a man who believed the desert was alive.

Which… okay. Maybe he hadn’t been wrong.

She sat down and began flipping through the top layer. Most of the journals were standard old-man ramblings: weather, soil notes, conspiracy tangents, god-knows-what. Some had pages torn out. Some were blank. Others had only dates and single words. Hum. Echo.

She sighed. Almost gave up.

Then her fingers caught on a smaller, worn book wedged between two sketchpads. Leather-bound. No title.

She opened it.

The land remembers the ones it claims.

Classic grandfather cryptic bullshit.

The following pages were a mess of flora notes and desert fragments. Silence, shadows, heat. But in the middle of a page on cacti, like a grenade in a garden, she found this:

She thought she could harness it. Thought her love was enough to command the wild.

But the desert does not bend. It does not listen. It does not need love.

It needs surrender.

The bloom burned too fast. She opened too early. The roots never held.

She turned to ash before spring.

Nora stared at it.

Okay.

She read it again, slower.

Then a third time, squinting like that might help it make more sense.

“The bloom,” she muttered. “Turned to ash. Right. Sure.”

She shut the book and sat back in the chair, arms crossed.

The bloom burned too fast.

She hadn’t thought much about the word before. It had shown up here and there, sprinkled through the journals like pollen. She’d assumed it was metaphor. Just more desert poetry her grandfather had latched onto.

But this felt different.

This was a warning.

And it was written like he’d seen it happen. Or been told by someone who had.

A bloom wasn’t just a concept.

It was a person. A woman.

One who tried. And failed.

One who opened too soon.

Who burned.

Or was it about her? A warning? A prophecy? A passive-aggressive subtweet from the grave?

Whatever it was, it was uncomfortably specific.

Opened too early. Turned to ash.

It sounded poetic.

It also sounded like someone had died trying to do exactly what she was doing now.

“Get a grip,” she muttered.

She shoved the journal deep into the desk. As if that might bury the words with it.

Back in the living room, she threw herself onto the couch and stared at the ceiling.

The ache was still there. Not just in her skin now, but in her breath. Her blood.

She remembered the way he’d looked at her. Like he already saw the ending and was afraid to tell her.

And then he’d left. No explanation. No contact. Just the desert, and that taste of something more.

If this was part of some ancient rite of transformation, it could stand to be a little less emotionally manipulative.

***

She saw him just after sundown.

He was standing at the edge of the yard again. Far enough to look like hesitation. Close enough to feel like want.

Nora didn’t hesitate.

She walked toward him barefoot, barely aware of the dry grass scratching her ankles. The obsidian in her pocket pulsed like a second heartbeat.

The air between them shifted.

His chest rose and fell with effort, like he’d been running for miles and had only just stopped.

She looked up at him, all bark-textured muscle and glowing edges, and something low in her belly twisted.

“You came back,” she said.

His jaw worked. His eyes were wild, pupils blown wide.

“Didn’t mean to,” he rasped.

She blinked. He’d spoken very little before. Rough. Shallow.

This was deeper. Closer.

Like he was remembering how to be human again.

Her chest tightened. “You think that’s comforting?”

He moved.

Fast. Sudden, like a storm breaking its own stillness.

One barked hand cradled her cheek, the other pressed to her back as he pulled her hard against him.

She gasped at the feel of him, solid and searing and desperate.

His mouth found her neck, breath hot and uneven.

“I tried,” he growled into her skin. “Tried to stay buried. Stay bark. Stay gone. But you called me. And now I burn.”

Her fingers dug into his chest. His skin shifted under her palms, like polished bark pulled too tight.

“You suck at staying away,” she whispered.

Then she kissed him.

Or maybe he kissed her. It didn’t matter. Their mouths collided like they were made for it. Messy and hot and full of teeth. He groaned into her mouth like the sound had been buried for too long, and she swallowed it greedily.

She reached for him everywhere. Chest, shoulders, the cords of his neck. Her hands snagged in his hair, tugging just to see what sound he’d make.

He growled again.

Then she was airborne, lifted like she weighed nothing. He pressed her back against a boulder, cool stone digging into her spine.

She wrapped her legs around his waist.

His hips ground against hers, hard and hungry, and she moaned into his mouth.

His cock was pressed between them, hot and huge and unmistakable through the thin wrap of his loincloth.

The ridges she’d felt in dreams—textured, thick, impossibly real—rubbed through her shorts, maddening in their pressure.

Her head fell back against the stone. “Oh my god—”

He wasn’t gentle.

He was reverent, yes. But not soft. Not tame.

His hands cupped her ass, lifting her higher, angling her just right so he could thrust against her in slow, grinding rolls. His cock dragged against her clit through their clothes, and she sobbed into his shoulder.

“You smell like fire,” he breathed against her neck. “Like the land’s already claimed you.”

She rocked her hips harder. “Then let the land have me—through you.”

One of his hands slid up her belly, beneath her tank top. His palm covered her breast, thumb brushing her nipple until it ached. Then his mouth followed, sucking, biting gently, pulling sounds from her she didn’t know she could make.

Her hands scrabbled at his back, feeling the ridged lines of his skin shift like carved wood under muscle. Every inch of him was unyielding, except for the way he touched her.

She wanted to know what he was made of, what he felt like all over. Her hands slipped down, over the curve of his hip, across the taut planes of his lower stomach.

He wasn’t human. Not even close.

His skin there was warm and ridged, textured like bark polished smooth in places, rough and grooved in others. Her fingers caught on deep, swirling lines that felt like roots under the surface, pulsing with some internal current. Something older than veins and blood.

She reached between them, cupping him through the loose fabric of the loincloth.

He was massive.

And not just in size, though that made her breath stutter.

In structure. She felt the ridges along his shaft, firm and unnatural, as if carved from wood and wrapped in velvet heat.

Thick and impossibly long, the tip already damp against the cloth.

It twitched under her hand, and she felt it, each pulse like it was syncing to her heartbeat.

She moaned without meaning to.

He snarled low in his throat, pressing harder against her, the friction deliciously obscene.

He pressed his forehead to hers, eyes blazing.

“You’re the storm I waited for,” he said.

“Then take what you came for,” she whispered, breath brushing his lips. “Claim me.”

His hand was already between them.

Her shorts shoved aside, his fingers slid through her slick heat, and she cried out.

Two fingers, thick, textured, curling just right. She clenched around them, panting, already close.

His other hand gripped her hip, steadying her as he fucked her with his fingers, grinding his cock against her clit with every thrust of his hips.

The world narrowed.

Her body felt lit from within.

Her skin glowed. Literally.

She saw it. So did he.

Light pulsed at her collarbones, her thighs, her fingertips. Golden and flickering and alive.

He stilled.

“No,” she gasped, bucking her hips. “Don’t stop—please—”

But his fingers had gone still inside her. His chest heaved.

His face was tight with something between awe and terror.

“You’re burning,” he whispered.

“Good,” she snapped. “Let me—let me—”

He eased his fingers from her slowly, like she was made of flame.

She sobbed at the loss.

His body still trembled. His cock still pressed against her, so hard it looked painful. But he pulled back, just enough to set her down on shaky legs.

She staggered, reaching for him, but he caught her wrists before she could touch him.

He looked at her like she was both sacred and untouchable.

“I can’t lose another,” he said, voice cracked. “Not like before.”

She froze.

“What?”

He shook his head, jaw tight.

“I won’t watch you burn out.”

And then he was gone.

He stepped back into the dark, retreating with brutal self-control. Every step away from her felt like a door slamming.

Nora stood alone, skin still glowing faintly, thighs wet, body shaking.

Her breath hitched.

She screamed.

Into the quiet. Into the wind. Into the stars.

It didn’t matter. He was already gone.

The wind didn’t move. The earth didn’t answer. The stars stared like they were waiting to see what she’d do next.

She yanked her shorts back into place with shaking hands, as if dignity were something you could put back on.

His words kept repeating in her head like a bell that wouldn’t stop ringing.

“You’re burning.”

“I can’t lose another.”

She didn’t know what hit harder:

That he thought she was unraveling.

Or that someone else had done it first.

She walked home barefoot, shaking, buzzed like a wire about to snap.

She opened the door and locked it behind her, out of habit, even though she doubted locks meant anything to whatever Asher was.

She peeled off her tank top and stared at her chest in the hallway mirror.

Her skin looked normal now. Maybe a little flushed. Maybe a little too perfect. But no glow. No sparks.

Still, she didn’t look like herself.

She looked like someone pretending to be okay.

She sat cross-legged on the couch, clutching the obsidian stone like it might offer answers.

It didn’t.

“I don’t know what you want from me,” she said. To the room, to the desert, to herself.

There was no reply.

But her palms started to tingle again.

She dropped the stone.

It hit the floor with a soft thunk and didn’t move.

“Cool,” she muttered. “Thanks.”

She leaned forward, pressing her elbows into her knees, head in her hands.

He’d looked at her like he couldn’t stay away. Like he was made of need.

And then he’d pulled back. Like she was poison. Or fire.

You’re burning , he said.

Good.

She hoped she set the whole goddamn desert on fire.

What made it worse was how much she still wanted him.

Her body didn’t care about metaphors or past traumas. It wanted his hands again. His mouth. His voice. So deep and ruined and human and sad. She hated how much it shook her. How much it mattered.

He hadn’t said her name. He hadn’t promised anything.

But the words he did say had landed like a curse.

I can’t lose another.

She swallowed hard.

There had been another. Of course there had.

Some desert love story gone wrong. A first bloom who didn’t survive.

And now, she was on the same path. Glowing and aching and trying not to fall apart.

She pressed her thighs together and winced.

Her body was still betraying her. Still pulsing. Still ready.

Ready for what, though?

More rejection?

More almosts?

She curled onto her side and pulled a throw blanket around her shoulders.

She didn’t cry.

But she didn’t sleep either.

Because even with her eyes closed, she could still feel him.

And she wasn’t sure if that meant he was nearby, or if he’d left something inside her that wasn’t going to leave.