Page 2 of Beneath the Desert Bloom (Of Beasts and Bloom #1)

But the heat. Sometimes the heat was like a thick, living thing. It clung to her, suffocating her. She had flipped on the swamp cooler earlier, and now she just had to wait it out.

She went back inside and made what she called the single-lady special: crackers and cheese, a few olives, some pickles, and a generous pour of pinot noir. She ate at the kitchen table, scrolling her phone with dead eyes, taking in none of it.

Afterward, she cleaned as much as she could stand. The drive had been long, her body was sore, and, if she was being honest, she was more on edge than she’d expected. Being back felt strange. Like the house was watching her.

She changed the sheets, put on her pajamas, and flopped onto the bed in exhaustion.

She just needed to breathe. She wasn’t planning on staying long.

She just needed to catalog the useful stuff, then sell the place.

She didn’t have to stay here forever, and she wasn’t about to let superstitions and old stories get under her skin.

But the desert didn’t care about her plans. It just kept pressing against the walls.

***

Soon, a heavy sleep sucked her under. The wind hit her first. She didn’t hear it. She just felt the pressure, like a hot breath against her skin. She felt it move over her arms, past her neck, coiling around her legs.

She wasn’t in the house anymore. The ground beneath her had turned to hot, shifting sand grinding against her skin. The sky stretched above her, deep and violet, the stars like burning holes punched through it.

She was barefoot, half-naked, the air alive with electricity, making her hair stand on end. And she wasn’t alone.

A tall, looming shadow moved toward her, shifting shape as it approached.

Sometimes she saw a man, sometimes something else.

He had massive shoulders, and his skin looked like it wasn’t quite human, almost like tree bark or something rough around the edges.

He wore no clothes except for a piece of fabric loosely tied around his hips.

His hair was dark and tangled, and his eyes were like smoldering coals, cutting through the dark. They looked familiar.

She tried to move, but her legs felt rooted to the sand. She didn’t feel afraid. It felt more like some primal part of her didn’t want to run. Maybe she even wanted him closer.

Her pulse kicked hard and alive as the figure stepped closer, the ground seeming to bend under his weight. Nora knew she should be terrified, but a deeper part of her was thrumming with energy. Her dream body knew something her mind didn’t.

His eyes pinned her. He was looking at her as if searching for something buried deep.

Now he was right next to her, close enough to reach out and touch her.

She felt the energy in her body pulse. He didn’t touch her, though.

He just hovered, close enough that the heat off of his skin burned against her cheek.

“Who are you?” she whispered, throat dry.

He didn’t say anything. He just stared, almost like he couldn’t believe she was there.

Her pulse pounded so hard it felt like the world tilted.

Heat rolled through her in waves, settling heavy and wet between her legs.

He leaned in, lips brushing the edge of her jaw.

It wasn’t quite a kiss, but it felt incredibly intimate.

She bit her bottom lip and felt herself arch toward him, despite the warning bells in her head.

The air was charged, suffocating, and every inch of her skin felt like it was waiting for him to touch her.

Then he whispered, “I… remember you,” his voice low and rough, like wind dragging over stone.

The words vibrated through her, heavy and raw, leaving her breathless. Just as his hand brushed her hip, she jerked awake, gasping.

She shot upright, the bedsprings squeaking under her. Her skin was damp, flushed, and her thighs ached like she’d been running for miles.

“Goddamn it,” she muttered, pressing her hands to her face. Her heart was still racing, and a slick heat still pulsed between her legs.

Yup. Just your average academic having wet dreams about a cryptid. Totally fine. Everything’s fine.

She hadn’t felt turned on like that in… well, years. Her dating life had died a slow, boring death after her last PhD fling had fizzled out, and here she was, getting hot over a literal desert cryptid.

“Yeah, that’s totally healthy,” she muttered, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. “Desert fever or horny breakdown? You decide.”

Just then, she heard a slow, deliberate thud, like something heavy moving outside. Her heart dropped, and she crept to the window, peering out through the crack in the curtain. She saw nothing out of place, nothing moving under the long shadows of Joshua trees stretching like claws across the sand.

She bit her lip, forcing herself to breathe. Maybe it was a coyote. Or maybe she was just losing it. But she couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. Like something was just out of sight, waiting for her to look away.

She pulled the curtain closed, hands shaking. “You’ve been here one day, and you’re already losing your shit. Great.”

It wasn’t the first time Nora had felt a presence in this way.

Years ago, on a dig site in Oaxaca, she’d spent days alone in the hills with nothing but heat, vultures, and half-buried obsidian tools.

One night, she’d woken up certain that something enormous had just stepped past her tent.

There had been no footprints, no sound. She just knew something was there because of that pressure.

She’d written it off as altitude sickness and too much isolation.

But this was different. This was home.

Sometimes she hated that word. Home. It crept in when she wasn’t paying attention, making the place feel important when it shouldn’t.

This house wasn’t home. It never had been.

Her grandfather had been more of a ghost than a guardian.

He was a presence that loomed without ever really being there.

He’d left her with half-memories and ritual scars, stories whispered like prophecies, meant to keep her in line.

And now he’d left her a broken-down bunker of a house, no body to bury, and a shadow with gold-flecked eyes lurking just outside the window.

She needed a drink.

The kitchen was soaked in cold blue moonlight, the counters filmed with desert dust and neglect. The faucet groaned when she tried to turn it on, at first sputtering out nothing but a rusty cough.

She filled a cup and pressed the cool glass to her forehead, the condensation trickling down her cheek. This place was a dump.

In the back of a high cabinet, she found a bottle of mezcal, label faded and peeling. A dead scorpion curled at the bottom like a bad omen. She wiped the dust off the bottle and took a long pull, the burn clawing its way down her throat but settling warm in her stomach.

“Here’s to you, Pops. You always did like your shit strong and weird.”

She carried the bottle out to the porch and dropped onto the front step, stretching her legs into the warm sand. The air was cooler now, but still thick, and the stars stretched wide and careless above her.

The desert always looked better at night. On the roof with her grandfather, tracing constellations in the velvet sky, it had felt almost magical. Back then, her grandfather used to say the sky was clear because the desert took everything else away.

He’d said it like a joke, but it had always felt like a warning to her.

A tear slid down her cheek. She quickly wiped it away with the back of her hand and took another swig.

It hadn’t been all bad. The old man had done his best. When Nora’s mother had gotten sick, he had taken her in.

And when her mother died a couple of years later, she stayed there permanently.

But she hadn’t adjusted well to life in the desert, or really, to life without her mother.

The townspeople called her a wild child.

A bad seed. She knew it hadn’t been easy on her grandfather either, but Nora couldn’t see past her own problems.

And when his mind started slipping, Nora had to get out before the desert swallowed her, too.

She’d left to save herself. She hadn’t expected to never see him again.

She looked out across the desert, searching for something to anchor her thoughts.

To the left, the land rolled out into sand and rock, broken by boulders and the clawed arms of Joshua trees.

Somewhere out there was the place her grandfather used to hike.

The Hollow Watcher, a large rock formation shaped like a leaning man.

He’d always said that’s where the Yucca Man passed through when he was nearby.

She hadn’t thought about that name in years. Yucca Man. A joke, a boogeyman, a local legend people trotted out to scare newcomers. The Bigfoot of the Mojave. A desert cryptid. Big as a bear, built like a man, with eyes that burned like dying coals and skin like bark.

She’d even written a paper on it once: “Myth Convergence and the Persistence of Regional Lore.” It had been clinical. Detached. Cultural anthropology at its most boring.

But now, staring out into the dark, she felt a little on edge. Like someone or something was watching her.

She shook her head. “Nope. Not doing this.”

She realized just how vulnerable she was, out in the desert, completely alone.

“This is insane,” she muttered. “It’s probably some desert creeps.”

She didn’t wait to find out. She went inside, to where she knew Orin kept his gun, fingers trembling as she loaded it. She wasn’t about to let some weird desert stalker freak her out.

“What the hell did you find out here, Pops?” she whispered to the empty room.

But the answer was already there, stuck in her chest like a thorn.

Whatever it was, it had found her too.