Page 24 of Beneath the Desert Bloom
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.
