Page 75 of Beneath the Desert Bloom
Each pulse felt like the land itself binding them.
He stayed inside her, panting, trembling, forehead pressed to hers as the desert outside bloomed.
Moonflowers opened.
Cacti unfurled.
The earth remembered them.
“You’re mine,” he whispered. “The one the land kept me waiting for.”
She smiled, flushed and radiant.
“And you’re mine.”
He collapsed over her, and she wrapped her arms around his shoulders, pulling him closer.
His breath shuddered against her neck.
She stayed silent, the meaning thrumming between them.
She wasn’t alone anymore.
Something sacred had happened.
And she was never going back.
They lay in the charged quiet that follows something too big for words.
Asher’s weight was still half on top of her, his body trembling against hers with the shivers of release, of restraint finally undone. Nora’s hands were splayed across his back, fingertips brushing the curve of his spine, still feeling the tension wound tight in his muscles, even now. Like he couldn’t let go all the way. Like he was afraid of what would happen if he did.
The scent of sage and salt lingered in the air, hers and his, tangled. And something else. Something floral. Faint. Sweet. Blooming in a place where nothing should bloom.
Nora’s mind was still somewhere far off, floating on the tail end of an orgasm that had felt more like a rite than a release. Her limbs tingled. Her chest still fluttered where her heart beat just a little too fast. And between her legs, a deep, satisfied ache pulsed where he’d filled her, still slick, still open, still raw.
He hadn’t moved since he came.
Just breathed her in. One arm wrapped around her waist, the other braced beside her head like he was scared she might slip away.
She shifted a little beneath him.
His breath caught.
“The land,” he murmured, voice rough against her skin, “it takes. It doesn’t let go. I don’t want it to take you the way it took me.”
He was trembling.
She answered without thinking, her hand sliding up to the back of his neck, fingers threading into his hair.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she whispered.
The words surprised her. She hadn’t planned them.
But they were true.
Because something had happened. Something neither of them could undo. This wasn’t just sex.
This was binding.
