Page 46 of Beneath the Desert Bloom
She brought her fingers between her legs, just to check. To believe it had really happened. Wet. Warm. Still tingling.
She wasn’t dreaming.
He’d been here.
He’d made her come—twice—and then vanished like fog.
"Cool," she muttered. "That’s healthy."
She sat up slowly, bracing for the bolt of pain that should’ve shot up her leg.
But nothing came.
Her ankle, twisted and swollen and definitely not okay hours ago, felt solid. Steady. Suspiciously functional. She pressed on it cautiously, then again. No throb. No swelling. Not even a twinge.
Okay... what the actual hell. Right. Of course the bark man has magic hands.
Her gaze drifted toward the door. He was long gone. But the feeling wasn’t.
Whatever Asher was—whateverthiswas—he didn’t just touch her. He... rewrote things.
Including her.
She stood shakily and padded to the kitchen. Every nerve in her body felt a little too awake. Like the knobs had all been turned up.
She poured a glass of water and drank the whole thing in a single pull. Her throat still tasted like him. Like salt and sage and skin warmed by sun.
A laugh broke out of her, breathless and small.
Her eyes stung.
She pressed her palms to the edge of the counter and bowed her head.
The ache wasn’t just in her thighs anymore. It was under her ribs, sharp and lingering, like she’d been hollowed out and hadn’t noticed until he left.
And he had left.
Without a word.
No kiss. No explanation. No chance to say please don’t.
Just the memory of his mouth between her legs, the look in his eyes, and that impossible, beautiful body trembling with restraint.
She didn’t know what to make of it.
She couldn’t stop replaying it. The way he’d held her. The way his tongue had—
She stopped herself.
If she thought about it any more, she’d end up back on the couch with her fingers inside herself and a head full of moss and heat.
Instead, she washed her face.
The bathroom mirror caught her off guard.
Her reflection looked undone. Hair wild. Pupils wide. A glimmer still lingering across her chest. There were crescent moons pressed into her thighs from his hands. The skin around her nipple looked raw.
She looked like someone who’d been claimed.
