Page 21 of Beneath the Desert Bloom
She took a single step forward, without really choosing to. The ground felt soft beneath her boots. The air was thick and sweet, tasting of sage and heat and the faintest tang of her own sweat.
Her skin tingled everywhere he wasn’t touching, the same energy from her dreams, but now it pressed against her from the outside.
Then, a sound. A long, warbling howl cracked the silence. A coyote, distant but sharp. It cut through the spell, making her flinch.
She looked away. Just for a heartbeat.
And when she looked back, he was gone.
The air snapped cold, like a window slammed shut.
She rushed to where he’d stood, fell to one knee and pressed her palm to the dirt. It was hot. Still radiating warmth, like he’d been carved from fire and left his mark on the world.
Her breath shuddered out of her. The desert felt thinner now, as if it opened a curtain just long enough for her to see behind it.
He was real.
And he’d let her see him.
Just enough to want more.
CHAPTER 6
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.Hopingfor something to shift. It didn’t.
