Page 50 of Beneath the Desert Bloom
Typical.
She collapsed onto the couch, flushed and exhausted and still weirdly aroused.
She stared at the ceiling.
Her thighs tingled. Her scalp prickled. Her heartbeat felt slower now. Deeper. Like it was syncing with something older.
Or maybe she was just dehydrated.
She ran a hand down her stomach, across her ribs, to the hollow beneath her hip. Her skin was hotter there. Different. Something was happening. She could feel it like a second pulse.
“Great,” she mumbled. “I finally get a man and it turns me into a cactus.”
The obsidian pulsed faintly. She ignored it.
She sat on the back steps in her underwear and a tank top, drinking the dregs of her coffee like it might have something stronger hidden at the bottom.
The sun was lower now. Shadows stretched long across the yard.
Very cinematic.
Very lone woman spiraling in isolation.
All it needed was a melancholy guitar track.
It felt surreal, how the world carried on. Like it hadn’t shifted beneath her while she’d come undone on a tongue that didn’t belong to anything natural.
She blew out a breath. “Should’ve at least gotten flowers.”
The wind stirred.
She knew that feeling now.
He was out there. Watching. Same as before.
Coward.
“I know you’re there,” she said softly. “What, are you worried I’m gonna ask what we are?”
She looked down at her bare legs. The sweat on her chest. She wondered if this was what he wanted. To leave her like this. Edged. Pulled tight. Wound up.
She pressed her knees together. The ache was back. Low. Slow. Familiar.
“Seriously,” she said into the silence, “if you’re not gonna touch me, the least you could do is let me yell at you.”
The wind didn’t answer.
Of course it didn’t.
She stood. Slowly.
Inside, she didn’t bother with lights. The dark was easier.
The obsidian pulsed as she passed. She flipped it off. “Yeah, yeah. I know. The thread. The desert. Whatever.”
She paused in the hallway. Her hand brushed her collarbone, then drifted lower, to the place where his mouth had rested.
She could still feel the heat there. As if he’d branded her. Or maybe she’d done it herself, just by wanting it that much.
