Page 20 of Beneath the Desert Bloom
God, she didn’t even know anymore.
She paused in the middle of the road, squinting toward the far hills. They shimmered like a mirage. No signs. No answers. Just that same strange pull, growing louder every time she tried to ignore it.
She dragged a hand through her hair and muttered, “Jesus, Nora. If this ends with you marrying a tree spirit, I swear to god.”
But she was already walking toward her car.
Nora pressed a palm to her chest, felt her heart hammering like it was trying to outrun her thoughts. She exhaled.
The sun was brutal.
But the desert was already under her skin.
She drove west, into the darkening teeth of the desert.
The ranger’s cryptic warning looped in her head.
The desert knew you were coming back. It doesn’t waste time on the wrong people. And it doesn’t give them back, either.
The road ended sooner than she expected. The sky bled out its last color, and she parked at the edge of Hollow Wash. The sun slipped behind the ridge line, and the world held its breath.
She didn’t know what she was doing. Only that she had to be here.
The air pressed against her skin, warm and heavy, and every nerve felt tuned to something she couldn’t see.
The trail pulled at her. Her breath quickened and became shallow. Her pulse fluttered in her throat.
She reached the Hollow Watcher and laid a hand on its scorched surface. It was warm, like flesh and heat, like a body.
A wind picked up, curling around her ankles, lifting her hair. The world seemed to dim around her as the air filled with electricity.
She turned slowly.
And saw him.
Not a dream. Not a trick of heat.
A huge figure, part shadow, part man, or something resembling man.
He stood half-shrouded behind a row of leaning Joshua trees and boulders. His frame was enormous, broad across the chest, shoulders like stone slabs. The last light of day licked across his skin, bark-colored, ridged and alive with texture, glowing in the cracks. His hair spilled in dark waves over his collarbones, and his eyes burned gold, cutting through the dusk.
Nora’s breath caught. Her whole body went still, every inch of her skin aching like it wanted to lift toward him. Her heart slammed against her ribs. A low thrum gathered deep in her core, that same hot ache from her dreams, raw and undeniable.
He didn’t move, but she thought she saw his eyes soften as he looked at her.
The air between them shifted, becoming dense, humming, alive with some electric current that crawled over her skin,making her nipples tighten under her shirt, her thighs press together. Of course her body would react before her brain.
He tilted his head, watching her.
He wasn’t animal. He wasn’t human.
She wanted to speak, but all that came out was a breathy, ragged whisper.
“Who are you?”
He didn’t answer. But the way his gaze moved over her felt like he was memorizing her, mapping every inch of her skin without touching it.
His hand rose, like he was gently reaching out to her, almost longingly. His fingers brushed a low branch, slow and deliberate. Her breath hitched.
