Page 6 of Beneath the Desert Bloom (Of Beasts and Bloom #1)

BACK AT THE house, Nora dropped the now-runny ice cream into the freezer, knowing it was a lost cause. She moved through the kitchen on autopilot, organizing the pantry with twitchy precision. Anything to keep her from thinking too hard.

She tried to work. Tried to summon words for her thesis, but they came out crooked and flat, like a dead language her fingers no longer spoke.

She answered a few emails. Dodged the ones she didn’t want to read.

Sent excuses to her professors that felt thin even as she typed them.

Normally, being behind would gnaw at her.

But out here, the rules didn’t apply. Not the academic ones.

Not the social ones. Out here, the clock ticked different.

She fired off one last message.

To: Eli

I made it. Everything’s fine.

Cell service is spotty out here, FYI.

Take care,

–Nora

She hit send and leaned back, closing her eyes. That should buy her a few days of quiet.

Dinner was perfunctory. She barely tasted it. Afterward, she stepped into the shower and stood under the stream until her skin went numb. When she emerged, she toweled off and pulled on a shirt and boxers, letting the air dry what the towel didn’t.

She lit a bundle of dried creosote and lavender, watching the smoke curl and hang in the air.

A glass of mezcal in one hand, she wandered back to the living room.

The obsidian stone sat beside the stack of journals, like it had always been there.

She picked it up. Without thinking, she pressed it to her lips.

Her thoughts wandered back to the Hollow Watcher.

There was something about that place that didn’t let go.

She remembered her grandfather talking about places where technology stopped working.

Cars that wouldn’t start, phones that went dead.

She’d hiked there before, but the memory was fuzzy, like it didn’t want to stick in her mind.

When she finally went to bed, the dream wasn’t gentle.

***

The night wind curled through the open window. The hush of the desert was complete, pressing against the house, dense enough to drown in.

She dreamed she was lying on warm sand. Her arms were limp at her sides, her body bare.

Above her, the stars spun.

A thousand pale eyes blinking open, watching. Ancient. Endless. Indifferent.

Then the weight came, surrounding her with heat and pressure and presence. The kind that pressed against her ribs, that made her breath catch in her throat.

He was there.

She didn’t need to turn her head. She felt him, so close that the hair on her arms lifted, her skin prickling with awareness. His breath was warm beside her ear. It smelled of sage, dust, and cedar smoke. Like something too old for names.

Goosebumps rose along her thighs. Her nipples tightened. Her body was already rising before he touched her, drawn toward him like a tide pulled by gravity.

Then his hand came. His palm was rough like bark in places, smooth like a river stone in others. It ghosted over the curve of her collarbone, down the line of her sternum, between her breasts, slow and reverent, like he was mapping her body from memory.

She shuddered. Her lips parted, and a soft, broken breath escaped. Part of her wanted to fight it, to push him away. But the deeper, more primal part of her, the one that felt newly awake and hungry, wanted to pull him closer.

His hand skimmed the side of her breast, pausing just enough to make her chest tighten. She whimpered, heart beating like thunder.

His breath stirred the fine hairs on her neck, and her body arched up instinctively, pressing against his touch, forcing him to make contact with her skin.

When his thumb grazed the peak of her nipple, electric pleasure moved through her like a shock.

Her hips bucked. Her clit throbbed so hard she gasped.

And just as her body bloomed with ache, just as her hips began to lift, hungry for more, the dream fractured.

The stars dimmed. The sky warped.

She blinked. And saw him.

It wasn’t the version she knew. Not the towering, bark-skinned myth who haunted her edges.

But a man.

He was kneeling in the sand. Naked. Beautiful in a quiet, human way. Broad shoulders, strong arms, hair falling into his face. Dust streaked his back, his thighs, his hands. He wasn’t glowing. He wasn’t golden-eyed.

He looked tired.

He pressed his palms to the earth and bowed his head, whispering something she couldn’t hear.

The wind held its breath.

Then, the ground opened beneath him.

Roots split from his back. His mouth fell open, not in pain, but in surrender. There was no scream. No sound. Only light.

His chest lit from within, and where his ribs should have been, bark bloomed.

She gasped.

And the vision shattered.

She was back in her body, flat on the ground, sweating and burning.

His hand traced the slope of her breast, just enough to make her gasp. His breath warmed her skin.

She didn’t move. She couldn’t.

She felt the ache between her legs intensify, her hips lifting again of their own accord. Her thighs parted. Her body opened.

Still, he didn’t touch her there.

Instead, his fingers skimmed the soft curve of her hip, the crease of her thigh, the inside edge of the place she needed him most.

And then, just before he touched her, he spoke.

His voice was low, like distant thunder rolling through canyon stone.

“I remember…”

The sound echoed through her bones. Through the sand. Through the space between stars.

Then, softer, sadder:

“You are her.”

She whimpered. Her body trembled.

“Please…” she whispered, dream-drunk, not knowing what she was asking for.

She didn’t know what she wanted. She only knew that she was on fire with it. Her breath came in shallow bursts, her chest rising and falling too fast.

She wanted to say something, but the dream unraveled.

His hand vanished. The weight lifted. The sky went black.

She reached up blindly, fingers closing on air. The ache inside her sharpened into something worse than need. Loss.

Nora woke with a soft, broken moan, her body arched, chest damp with sweat. She lay perfectly still, afraid to chase the last traces of him away.

The sheets were twisted beneath her hips. Her skin was fever-warm. The pulse between her legs throbbed like a bruise. Her hand still clutched the obsidian stone.

The air was heavy with sage. And something else. Him.

You are her.

What did it mean?

Who was she?

And who had he been before?

She sat up slowly, heart hammering.

Her journal lay open beside the bed. She reached for it blindly, hand shaking, and wrote:

Was he human before?

He gave himself to the desert. Or it took him.

Then:

He remembers me.

She stared at the words, blinking through the haze of heat and longing.

Then she dropped the pen and groaned, pressing both hands to her face.

“Goddamn it,” she whispered, dragging one hand over her face. “This is fucking ridiculous. Add ‘thirsty for desert monster’ to the list of things I didn’t plan for this week.”

Her heart was still racing. Her thighs still clenched around the echo of the dream.

She threw the sheets back and sat on the edge of the bed.

“I need a new field of study,” she muttered. “Preferably one with fewer sacred erections.”

The air didn’t cool. The scent didn’t fade. Her body wouldn’t calm, her nipples hard under the thin fabric. Her body was still humming. Her mouth tasted like mezcal and desire.

She pulled the pillow over her head and groaned. “Oh, this is gonna be a problem.”

And the worst part?

Now she wanted him to be real.

Nora didn’t go back to sleep.

She drifted through the kitchen like someone half-possessed, feet bare against the cracked tile, hands moving without instruction.

In the back of the pantry, behind a rusted can of hominy and a jar of dust-caked molasses, she found a dented tin with faded flowers on the lid.

Inside were brittle curls of chamomile and a twist of desert thyme, probably a decade old.

She made tea anyway.

The water turned weak gold. The taste was bitter and medicinal. But it gave her something to do, something to hold. Her fingers trembled slightly as she carried the chipped mug to the kitchen table

The journal lay where she’d left it, marked in her grandfather’s strong, deliberate hand.

MAY — SEPTEMBER

She opened it to a page that felt too easy to find, like it had been waiting for her.

The third dream comes with hunger.

This is the trial, the test of skin.

If you touch him here, if you ask…

Then, you belong to each other.

Nora read it once. Then again. A third time.

The tea went cold in her hand. A chill licked its way up her spine. Her eyes flicked to the obsidian stone on the table. Her fingers moved before her mind caught up, curling around it like it might anchor her.

Did I ask?

She hadn’t said those words, not exactly. Not out loud. But in the dream, her mouth had opened. She had started to speak. She only got one word out, but her body had finished the statement. She had wanted.

Maybe that was enough. Maybe it always had been.

Her gaze drifted back to the journal. Her grandfather’s script was neat, unflinching. Not the writing of a man unraveling. This wasn’t rambling. This was a field report from the edge of reason.

Nora closed the journal slowly, the paper soft from years of heat and handling.

Maybe I’m losing it.

Living in a half-decayed house full of cryptid fan fiction, dreaming about bark-skinned strangers with gold eyes, sipping apocalypse tea like it’s normal.

She let her head fall forward into her hands.

But the truth buzzed behind her ribs like static.

She wasn’t frightened. She was hungry. The dream had touched something ancient in her. Something she couldn’t unfeel. And if there was any chance he was real and not just a dream, she had to know.

There was only one way to find out. She had to go looking for him. In real life.