Chapter 1323
Jude didn’t know how long he lay there, surrounded by warm skin, soft sighs, and the sticky sweet scent of sex that hung thick in the clearing like incense. His pulse had slowed, but his body still thrummed with that strange, eternal hunger. It was no longer the urgency of lust - it was deeper now, older. Like something sacred had rooted itself in his spine and was blooming outward, demanding worship not with words, but with moans and movement and the rhythm of flesh on flesh.
Rose curled against his side, her hair damp with dew and sweat, her thigh draped over his, her hand idly stroking along the line of his stomach. Every now and then she’d press a kiss to his chest without looking up, soft and reverent, like she was grounding herself in the heat of him. Lucy lay on his other side, whispering slow, half-drunk praises against his neck, while her fingers lazily traced down his torso, playing with the edge of his cock, which never seemed to soften completely anymore. It lay heavy, warm and alive, as if it belonged to the island now just as much as it did to him.
"We’ve never been this connected," Emma said from where she lounged nearby, her naked body gleaming with remnants of their worship. "Not even when we first arrived. It feels like... we’ve stopped pretending we’re human."
Zoey smirked from her place near the tree’s roots, her fingers gliding idly between her own thighs. "We were never just human. Not after the shimmer. Not after the bones. Not after her."
She nodded toward the great black tree, which stood silently watching them, the golden veins in its bark pulsing slowly, almost like a heartbeat.
Susan turned on her side, propping her head on one arm, her breast resting against Grace’s back as she murmured, "You think it’s watching us?"
"It’s inside us," Rose whispered, finally lifting her head. "It doesn’t need eyes. It feels every movement. Every climax. Every breath we take when we’re wrapped around him."
Jude groaned softly as Lucy’s fingers wrapped more firmly around him. She smiled, slow and seductive, her eyes half-lidded as she leaned in and kissed the tip of his cock, letting her tongue swirl there, lazily teasing.
"It feeds on connection," she murmured. "So let’s give it more."