Page 47 of Beneath the Desert Bloom
Her eyes lingered on her reflection. She looked like someone in the middle of falling. Maybe not in love. Not yet. But into something.
And yet, why had he left?
Was it her?
Was it too much? Her need, her voice, her body laid open like a book?
Maybe it scared him. Maybe she scared him.
Her throat tightened.
She didn’t know what had changed, only that something had. She could feel it buzzing under her skin, like a key turning in a lock she couldn’t see.
She touched her cheek. Still warm. Still humming.
She made her way to the front room and opened the door. The desert greeted her with a soft breeze. The wind was dry and cool. The sky stretched black above her, stars bleeding silver through the stillness.
No sign of him. No shift in the shadows. No figure on the edge of the yard.
Just the dark, waiting.
She stepped onto the porch and leaned against the post, arms crossed over her chest. The night felt too empty all of a sudden. Like a cathedral after the organ goes silent.
Her body still hummed.
She pressed her thighs together. The ache hadn’t left her. It had just changed shape. It lived under her skin now.
She whispered into the dark, not sure if she meant to say it out loud.
"Come back."
A wind gust lifted a curl of her hair. Something creaked in the yard.
She stared for a moment longer.
But the porch stayed empty.
Nora turned and went back inside. Closed the door. Locked it.
She moved like someone half-dreaming, unsure if any of this had happened at all.
The obsidian on the counter caught her eye.
She picked it up.
It didn’t glow, but it was warm.
She curled her fingers around it and sat back on the couch, wrapping herself in the throw blanket Lauren had left folded nearby. Her body ached in strange places. Her mind buzzed. She stared at the ceiling. She wasn’t sleepy, but she wasn’t there either.
She let her eyes fall closed.
And the last thing she felt before sleep dragged her under was the memory of his tongue and the ache of a name still lingering between her teeth.
CHAPTER 12
THE LIGHT WAS obnoxious the next morning.
It sliced through the curtains and landed in a smug grid across her body, hot where it hit bare skin. Nora groaned and rolled over, dragging the sheet with her. It didn’t help.
