Page 9 of Beneath the Desert Bloom (Of Beasts and Bloom #1)

BACK AT THE house, Nora didn’t bother with the lights. She shut the door behind her and stood still in the dark, hand clenched tight around the obsidian, like it could answer for what she’d just seen.

She barely remembered driving home. Just the color of the sky, split open and bruising. Just the silence on the road, broken by the echo of her own breathing and the image burned behind her eyes of something tall, rooted, unreal.

But he wasn’t unreal. No. He was real.

Real.

She whispered it like a confession. Like it might dissolve the charge still coiled beneath her skin.

I should be freaking out. I should be running.

But she wasn’t. She was aching.

Great. Fantastic. I’m officially dickmatized by a dream cryptid. Somebody call my thesis advisor.

The house creaked in the wind. She moved through the space slowly, her breath too shallow, limbs too tight. Her skin felt sunburned from the inside out, her every nerve pulled taut.

She dropped her bag but kept the stone. It was cold now, cooler than it should be, and she pressed it to her mouth like a fevered child might press ice to her lips. But the touch didn’t calm her. It excited her. And that was worse.

She sank onto the edge of the bed, head in her hands, heart thudding. Outside, the wind dragged across the desert in sheets. The windows hissed with grit. And underneath that, she felt his presence.

Her phone buzzed on the table. She didn’t look. It was probably Eli. Of course it was Eli.

She couldn’t handle his version of concern. Half-control, half-performance. She was in the middle of something ancient and impossible, and he would just ask if she was staying hydrated.

Nora let out a ragged breath and pressed the stone flat to her chest.

She hadn’t imagined it. His eyes. The shape of him. The weight of his presence, like gravity bending wrong. He had been there, watching her. Waiting.

But the thought wasn’t terrifying to her, like it probably should be. It was intimate. Intolerably intimate.

She stood again, unable to calm down, and walked to the window. Peeled back the edge of the curtain. The Joshua trees still leaned, unmoving. The moon silvered the sand, making it look brittle, fragile, like it might crack underfoot.

Something flickered near the back of the house, but when she looked straight at it, it was gone. She stayed at the glass for a long moment, muscles tight, holding her breath, waiting for something to shift. Hoping for something to shift. It didn’t.

But the feeling stayed. She knew he was still out there. She had seen him.

Okay. So. The Yucca Man is real. And apparently hot. That’s... fine. That’s completely fine.

But what was he? She knew the legends, but none of them equaled what she had seen, or made any sense of how she felt. He was not a monster. She could see that very clearly. But she also could see that he was not entirely human. What was their connection?

She turned from the window and grabbed a journal from the table. It had no date, just a bookmark of red twine and sun- warped pages. Her fingers flipped with the urgency of someone trying to stop herself from thinking.

Halfway through, a passage snagged her attention.

The land remembers him.

He was once a man. I believe that. But he’s not anymore. The desert made him something else.

A Guardian, maybe. Or a warning.

He doesn’t haunt this place. He anchors it. Moves through it like gravity, not ghost.

He waits. Not because he’s lost.

But because he can’t leave until the one who’s meant to follow him finally does.

Her breath hitched. She read it again.

The one who’s meant to follow him.

Her.

It felt stupid to think it, but the truth was already forming in the center of her chest, expanding each moment that she remained in the desert.

The dreams, the footprints on the porch, the stone in her hand.

Opal telling her of the pact, one to guard and one to bloom.

These weren’t coincidences. They were a map. A pull towards something.

She sat back down on the bed, knees drawn up.

The room felt too small now, claustrophobic.

She rubbed the smooth stone with her thumb.

It felt alive under her touch. Her fingertips tingled where they’d clenched the stone.

A slow warmth spread through her chest, not soothing, but…

expectant. Like something inside her had started to listen back. She felt different, changed.

Tomorrow, she’d go back. She’d find him and get her questions answered, once and for all.

A high, lonesome howl split the dark, a coyote off in the distance sending a warning call.

Nora pressed the obsidian to her chest and let its chill settle her. Outside, the air had cooled. Inside, her skin still burned. Her mind drifted loose, unspooling.

***

Sleep didn’t just take her that night. It claimed her.

Like a descent into warm water, slow and total. Like remembering something she wasn’t supposed to.

It began with sound.

A low hum. A vibration, like heat rising off stone. It moved through her ribs, her throat, her hips. Her limbs tingled. Her breath thickened. The hum wasn’t outside her. It was her.

Then, scent.

Sage. Smoke. Rain on dust. Wet earth after a years-long drought.

And then, form.

He rose from the sand like something the land had dreamed up. He didn’t step. He emerged.

A silhouette at first. Shifting. Unstable. She saw him clearer this time. Part man. Part something older. Shoulders too broad. Hair long and dark, caught in some invisible wind.

His eyes burned.

Nora knelt naked in the sand. She wasn’t cold or afraid. The sky above was a black ocean, trembling with stars.

He stepped toward her, soundless, and the world stilled. The stars dimmed. The air grew heavier. The space between them collapsed.

He stopped in front of her, close enough to cast heat.

She should have risen. Run. Spoken.

But she couldn’t.

Wouldn’t.

Every atom in her body thrummed.

He crouched with fluid grace, one massive hand hovering just above her skin. His fingers were thick and ridged.

His fingertips grazed her collarbone. The side of her torso. The curve of her hip. A path like he was retracing something once lost. A map only he remembered.

Her breath caught, chest tightening. Her nipples peaked, achingly stiff, as goosebumps bloomed across her skin like desert flowers after a storm. The heat inside her coiled tight, ancient, wild.

She arched instinctively. Her thighs pressed together.

He circled her, slow and soundless. A force more than a man.

And then he was behind her, solid heat pressed against her back. Immense. Aroused. She gasped, the bulk of him staggering in its size and density. But she didn’t pull away.

His hands slid down her arms, her ribs, settling at her hips. He pulled her up to him as she leaned back into his heat. He bent low, lips ghosting just below her jaw.

The breath he released onto her throat made her knees falter.

One arm wrapped around her middle, anchoring her against the wall of his chest. The other drifted lower.

When his fingers parted her thighs, she didn’t protest. Didn’t breathe.

She only opened.

A single finger slid through her already slick heat.

She moaned, full-throated and raw, her head falling back against his shoulder. Her clit throbbed as he circled her, slow, purposeful. Each pass drew a fresh pulse of molten ache from her core, wet heat blooming beneath his touch.

Her hips rocked in time with him, seeking pressure. Rhythm. Relief.

His other hand moved to her chest, cupping one breast, thumb dragging over her peaked nipple until she cried out.

Her thighs shook. Her breath fractured.

His fingers dipped lower, two now. Long, thick, impossibly rough and smooth at the same time, slipping inside her in one fluid stroke.

She gasped, clenching around them, body spasming.

Her cunt welcomed the stretch. The shape of him. Her hips jerked, need sharpening into something primal.

The sound of her breath came loud now, panting, soft cries caught between pleasure and overwhelm.

He curled his fingers.

She shattered.

Her body pitched forward, but his arm held her fast. His pace didn’t falter. He fucked her with his fingers, deep and sure, each thrust pulling her higher.

The dream flickered.

The stars above flared. The air gleamed.

She was burning.

And then, her eyes flew open.

Dark ceiling. Damp sheets.

Her thighs were parted. Her fingers still buried inside herself.

Her shirt rucked above her breasts, nipples still throbbing.

The air smelled of sex and desert and something older.

She moaned softly, hips still working. A tremor passed through her as the orgasm crested, real and vivid and hers.

A second hit almost instantly. Her head fell back, mouth open in a soundless cry. Her body writhed against the sheets, cunt pulsing around her fingers as wetness pooled beneath her.

When it finally passed, she collapsed against the mattress, breath stuttering.

The ache didn’t vanish. It only dulled to a low, pulsing throb.

She turned her head slowly.

There, on the sheets beside her —

Sand.

Grains clung to her skin. To the sweat at the base of her neck.

And on the inside of her thigh, a print.

It wasn’t clear, but it was unmistakable.

Fingers. Too long, too wide to be human.

Her body still felt split open.

She whispered one word into the dark:

“Asher.”

Nora didn’t move for a long time.

The sheets clung to her thighs, damp and tangled, and her pulse thudded in places that had no business still pulsing. The air in the room was too quiet, too still. Like the dream had sucked all the sound out of the world and left only the echo of her own breath.

She touched the inside of her thigh again. The mark was fading, but she still felt it.

A deep, thrumming ache sat low in her belly. Like a reminder. Like something unfinished.

She dragged herself upright, one hand braced on the wall. Her limbs trembled faintly, and her skin felt wrong. Thin. Like she’d been peeled open from the inside.

The room spun once before steadying. Her nipples were still hard, overly sensitive against the threadbare shirt she’d worn to sleep, and she cursed softly under her breath, pressing a palm to her chest like she could hold the heat in.

Her body hadn’t just dreamed that. It had lived it.

She reached for the glass of water by her bed, drank half of it in three gulps, then grimaced.

“Cool, cool. Sexually haunted. Just what every anthropologist dreams of.”

Her voice sounded hoarse, cracked with sleep and something more feral.

She stood, still half-naked, still aching, and walked barefoot across the cool tile. Her thighs brushed together, slick and sore. Every nerve felt overexposed, like a storm had rolled through her veins and decided to stay.

In the bathroom mirror, she looked the same. Mostly. Her cheeks were flushed. Her lips looked a little bitten. Her eyes though… those were different. Wide and glassy, a little too wild around the edges.

She didn’t look haunted.

She looked claimed.

That thought made her breath hitch.

What the hell was happening to her?

She leaned against the sink, gripping the edge. She’d had intense dreams before. Who hadn’t? But this wasn’t just about arousal. This had weight. It had intent. It had a name.

Asher.

The name she hadn’t known until she said it.

How did she even know it?

She didn’t. And yet she did. It had bloomed on her tongue like a secret already half-spoken.

Her hands trembled as she reached for a towel, wiping herself off without ceremony.

Her body was still humming, like it hadn’t gotten the memo that the dream was over.

She couldn’t stop picturing him behind her, wrapped around her.

The heat of his arousal, the sheer size of it pressing into her back.

“Pull it together, Vale,” she muttered, tossing the towel into the hamper.

But something had changed. And her body wasn’t done telling her. Whatever this was, it was starting now. The dreams had been the invitation.

But the real story, the one buried in the desert and in her skin, was just beginning.