Page 113 of Beneath the Desert Bloom
“But maybe that was the point.”
He made a sound, not quite a laugh, not quite a sob, and kissed the top of her head. She shifted, sliding her thigh further over his hip, body draped across his with all the weight of someone who never wanted to move again.
Around them, the Hollow glowed.
Flowers bloomed where blood had spilled. The cracked earth had softened. Even the Watcher, now split and silent, had stilled, its shadow recast not as warning, but as witness.
Nora lifted her head. Looked around. Looked at him.
“It’s done,” she whispered.
“No,” he said softly. “It’s begun.”
She smiled again, and this time it reached all the way down, curling into the hollow places she'd forgotten how to fill.
She didn’t know what would come next. But she knew the shape of it.
Ash and bloom.
Ruin and root.
Him and her and the land that would never stop wanting.
She curled closer, tangled her fingers in his, and closed her eyes.
And the desert, at last, bloomed with her.
CHAPTER 23
AT FIRST, THERE was only breath.
The land’s slow, low exhale pressed into the base of her spine, curled in the hollow beneath her ribs. A breath not made of air but of memory and heat and motion stilled.
Then came the ache.
A deep, bone-rooted soreness like she’d been cracked open and sewn back together from the inside out. Her thighs throbbed. Her cunt pulsed, swollen and sore, heat lingering between her legs like an echo of him. Her shoulders burned. Her chest felt too wide. Her skin…
Her skin.
It buzzed faintly, like a distant electric current running just beneath the surface. She could feel the wind move before it touched her. The grains of sand that clung to her thighs. The precise way the sun warmed her kneecaps but hadn’t yet reached her calves. Her eyelashes trembled, and she felt each one.
She opened her eyes.
The world had changed.
Or maybe it was her.
Light moved differently now, sharper at the edges, golden in places it had no right to be. The sky overhead was high and cloudless, same as before, but the blue had depth. Color glinted inside it. The ridge of the Hollow was cracked, but glowing faintly, like old stone holding onto heat.
The air smelled like sage and sweat and blood and bloom.
And underneath all of it—him.
She blinked again.
She was lying on her side in the dirt, naked and dusted with fallen petals, one leg draped over Asher’s thigh. His arm cradled her waist. His body, warm and massive beside her, rose and fell with deep, even breath.
For a second, she didn’t move.
