Page 25 of Beneath the Desert Bloom
“Cool, cool. Sexually haunted. Just what every anthropologist dreams of.”
Her voice sounded hoarse, cracked with sleep and something more feral.
She stood, still half-naked, still aching, and walked barefoot across the cool tile. Her thighs brushed together, slick and sore. Every nerve felt overexposed, like a storm had rolled through her veins and decided to stay.
In the bathroom mirror, she looked the same. Mostly. Her cheeks were flushed. Her lips looked a little bitten. Her eyes though… those were different. Wide and glassy, a little too wild around the edges.
She didn’t look haunted.
She looked claimed.
That thought made her breath hitch.
What the hell was happening to her?
She leaned against the sink, gripping the edge. She’d had intense dreams before. Who hadn’t? But this wasn’t just about arousal. This had weight. It had intent. It had a name.
Asher.
The name she hadn’t known until she said it.
How did she even know it?
She didn’t. And yet she did. It had bloomed on her tongue like a secret already half-spoken.
Her hands trembled as she reached for a towel, wiping herself off without ceremony. Her body was still humming, like it hadn’t gotten the memo that the dream was over. She couldn’t stop picturing him behind her, wrapped around her. The heat of his arousal, the sheer size of it pressing into her back.
“Pull it together, Vale,” she muttered, tossing the towel into the hamper.
But something had changed. And her body wasn’t done telling her. Whatever this was, it was starting now. The dreams had been the invitation.
But the real story, the one buried in the desert and in her skin, was just beginning.
CHAPTER 7
THE SUN WAS already high when Nora woke again. Later than she’d meant to, later than she ever slept. Her body ached in ways that felt like both aftermath and warning.
Everything hurt in the way a good night out used to hurt, back when she still had one-night stands and brunch plans and some semblance of normal hormones. That life felt embarrassingly far away now. Like a costume she used to wear before her body started reacting to men made of bark and glowing eyes.
The sheets were tangled around her ankles, still carrying telltale grains of sand. The room smelled faintly of sweat, sage, and the lingering warmth of someone else’s breath.
Great. Another night of supernatural sex dreams and desert debris. At this rate she’d be coughing up cactus by Wednesday.
She sat up slowly. Her fingers reached for the obsidian stone on the nightstand. It pulsed faintly against her palm. She stared at it for a long moment, then swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood. Her body protested, but she welcomed the discomfort. It meant she hadn’t imagined it.
He had been there. Or she had gone to him. She wasn’t sure anymore.
She went to the sink, splashed cold water on her face, and caught her reflection in the mirror.
She swore she saw a light glow coming from her skin.
The faint outline of a handprint lingered on her thigh. It was barely visible now, more of a shadow than a mark. But she couldstill feel it. Like his fingers were imprinted beneath the skin. Like her body remembered even when the evidence tried to fade.
“Ugh, what’s this now?” she muttered. “If this is what hot girl summer feels like, I’m out.”
But her voice was just noise in the room. It didn’t change the truth under her skin, the ache that had taken root in her bones. She wasn’t just rattled or obsessed. She was magnetized. Aligned.
Something inside her pulled toward him with the weight of gravity.
