Page 54 of Beneath the Desert Bloom
Her fingers dug into his chest. His skin shifted under her palms, like polished bark pulled too tight.
“You suck at staying away,” she whispered.
Then she kissed him.
Or maybe he kissed her. It didn’t matter. Their mouths collided like they were made for it. Messy and hot and full of teeth. He groaned into her mouth like the sound had been buried for too long, and she swallowed it greedily.
She reached for him everywhere. Chest, shoulders, the cords of his neck. Her hands snagged in his hair, tugging just to see what sound he’d make.
He growled again.
Then she was airborne, lifted like she weighed nothing. He pressed her back against a boulder, cool stone digging into her spine.
She wrapped her legs around his waist.
His hips ground against hers, hard and hungry, and she moaned into his mouth. His cock was pressed between them, hot and huge and unmistakable through the thin wrap of his loincloth. The ridges she’d felt in dreams—textured, thick, impossibly real—rubbed through her shorts, maddening in their pressure.
Her head fell back against the stone. “Oh my god—”
He wasn’t gentle.
He was reverent, yes. But not soft. Not tame.
His hands cupped her ass, lifting her higher, angling her just right so he could thrust against her in slow, grinding rolls. His cock dragged against her clit through their clothes, and she sobbed into his shoulder.
“You smell like fire,” he breathed against her neck. “Like the land’s already claimed you.”
She rocked her hips harder. “Then let the land have me—through you.”
One of his hands slid up her belly, beneath her tank top. His palm covered her breast, thumb brushing her nipple until it ached. Then his mouth followed, sucking, biting gently, pulling sounds from her she didn’t know she could make.
Her hands scrabbled at his back, feeling the ridged lines of his skin shift like carved wood under muscle. Every inch of him was unyielding, except for the way he touched her.
She wanted to know what he was made of, what he felt like all over. Her hands slipped down, over the curve of his hip, across the taut planes of his lower stomach.
He wasn’t human. Not even close.
His skin there was warm and ridged, textured like bark polished smooth in places, rough and grooved in others. Her fingers caught on deep, swirling lines that felt like roots under the surface, pulsing with some internal current. Something older than veins and blood.
She reached between them, cupping him through the loose fabric of the loincloth.
He was massive.
And not just in size, though that made her breath stutter. In structure. She felt the ridges along his shaft, firm and unnatural, as if carved from wood and wrapped in velvet heat. Thick and impossibly long, the tip already damp against the cloth. It twitched under her hand, and she felt it, each pulse like it was syncing to her heartbeat.
She moaned without meaning to.
He snarled low in his throat, pressing harder against her, the friction deliciously obscene.
He pressed his forehead to hers, eyes blazing.
“You’re the storm I waited for,” he said.
“Then take what you came for,” she whispered, breath brushing his lips. “Claim me.”
His hand was already between them.
Her shorts shoved aside, his fingers slid through her slick heat, and she cried out.
