Page 135 of Beneath the Desert Bloom
Breath to breath.
Blood to blood.
Root to root.
And Nora collapsed into the dirt, Asher still inside her, his body wrapped around hers.
She pressed her cheek to the ground, still panting, her skin still buzzing with heat and light.
“Well,” she said. “That was… not reversible.”
Asher let out a soft, ruined sound behind her, in-between laughter and breath.
He leaned over her and pressed his forehead to the back of her shoulder.
“Good,” he whispered. “I don’t ever want to go back.”
He kissed the curve of her spine and didn’t let go.
They stayed like that a long time.
Eventually, he softened.
She turned beneath him, and he slid out of her slowly, the stretch sweet and obscene, their fluids wet between her thighs.
She looked up at him. He was panting, glowing and beautiful. She smiled, and he kissed her so softly she could barely feel it.
Later, they lay in the dust, her head on his chest.
She traced the ridges of his chest, the bark-like patterns on his stomach, the curve of his thighs, the sacred lines of him. His skin was still cooling beneath her fingers. Still flickering faintly in the places where their bodies had pressed.
She wanted to remember him like this. Sacred. Hers.
He was quiet now. So was the desert.
She let her palm rest over his heart, felt the slow rhythm there. The beat was heavy, rooted. Like something finally at rest.
No wind stirred. No petals fell. Just the hush that comes after becoming.
She breathed in the silence. Let it settle.
And for once, she didn’t reach for meaning.
She just stayed.
Eventually, she sat up, stretching, gloriously bare.
She gathered a handful of petals from the earth, held them in her palm, and let the wind take them. They scattered high, curling, rising. Blooming.
She turned to him, her voice quiet, full of something older than words.
“The land remembers us now.”
He stood, joined her in the sun, and said:
“It always did.”
They walked back barefoot.
