Stuck in an Island with Twelve Beautiful Women
Chapter 1427

Chapter 1427: Chapter 1427

Lucy paused mid-bite, the ripe flesh of a mango dripping down her chin as her eyes went wide. Scarlet dropped to her knees near the altar, her breath catching as if the air had thickened. Zoey’s head snapped toward the woods, her fingers still curled around the grip of a vine-blade she hadn’t touched in days.

Stella stood slowly from the altar’s shadow, her hands cupped protectively over her stomach.

"She’s waking," Rose said quietly, stepping forward with that familiar, reverent expression Jude had come to associate with truth. "The first bloom was pleasure. This one will be power."

Sophie’s gaze moved toward the tree - the massive golden one beside the shrine - and her breath hitched. "It’s moving."

Jude turned, and his heart stopped.

The leaves weren’t just rustling. They were folding inward. Curling in on themselves. Then the bark began to ripple. A slow, pulsing contraction like the tree itself was breathing. A heartbeat echoed up from the roots through the ground. One. Two. Then faster.

Stella gasped, falling to her knees.

"Stella!" Emma rushed to her side, catching her as she swayed.

"She’s coming," Stella moaned. "She’s coming."

The shrine responded. The blackwood altar pulsed with gold light. Vines unfurled from the edges of the clearing and began to twist upward, forming new shapes - walls, arches, columns - as if the island were building around them in real time.

Rose didn’t hesitate. She climbed the altar and knelt beside Stella, laying both hands on her belly. "It’s not birth," she whispered. "It’s becoming."

Sophie joined them. Then Lucy. Then Natalie, Grace, Scarlet, Susan, Zoey. The circle was whole again.

Jude was the last to step up. He knelt in front of Stella and placed his forehead against her belly. "Show us," he whispered. "We’re ready."

Stella arched back, her mouth opening in a soundless scream.

Then it began.

A pulse of light shot from the ground beneath her, through her, up into the sky. It wasn’t fire. It wasn’t lightning. It was raw, golden energy - the hum made visible. It passed through her and into every single one of them like a wave, crashing and spreading. Jude cried out. So did Sophie. So did Zoey and Lucy and Rose.

And then it settled.

The forest fell completely silent.

Stella sat back, eyes wide, chest heaving. Her skin glowed. Literally glowed.

And then she said, with absolute certainty:

"She’s here."

They helped her stand, and the circle closed tighter. Each of them reached out - not just to Stella, but to each other. The connection was stronger now. Permanent. Jude felt Rose’s breath in his lungs. He felt Lucy’s heartbeat under his skin. He felt Sophie’s heat between his legs before she even moved.

But she did move.

She stepped into him, her lips brushing his jaw, her breath hot. "She wants to know everything." Her fingers slid down his abdomen, slow and aching. "Every sound we make. Every taste. Every shiver."

Jude groaned, his hands finding her hips, pulling her flush against him. "Then let’s show her."

Their mouths met - hot, hungry, familiar - but deeper now. Sophie wasn’t holding back anymore. She kissed him like a challenge, like a dance, her tongue sliding past his lips as her hands shoved down his waistband. He didn’t resist. He couldn’t.

The others circled them, not as voyeurs, but as worshippers. And then - slowly - they joined.

Rose kissed Sophie from behind, her fingers slipping between the other woman’s thighs as Jude thrust into her from the front. Sophie moaned into both of them, lost between the push and pull, the pleasure building inside her like a storm with no end. Emma and Grace knelt beside them, mouths pressed to each other’s breasts, one moaning, the other humming. Scarlet lay back on the moss and pulled Zoey on top of her, their bodies already slick with sweat.

Lucy climbed into Jude’s lap once Sophie collapsed against Rose’s chest, spent and breathless. She didn’t wait. She lowered herself onto him with a cry, grinding her hips in tight circles, her nails digging into his shoulders.

"Give her more," Lucy gasped. "Give us more."

And he did.

He made love to all of them that day - one by one, then two at a time, then more. It was heat and scent and taste and sound. It was mouths and hands and skin and salt. It was hours of limbs tangled in moss, of cries echoing through the golden clearing, of every orgasm feeding something bigger than any of them.

By the time the sun began to set, they were all lying in a single tangle - naked, marked, gleaming. Stella sat in the middle again, her back straight, her belly glowing faintly, the same golden pulse now flickering in her eyes.

"She sees you," she whispered to Jude.

He crawled toward her, spent and breathless, and kissed her belly.

"She loves you," Stella added, her voice cracking with the weight of it.

The vines began to bloom again.

Not the same petals. These were darker. Deeper. Iridescent. The color of dusk and secrets. The petals curled toward them as if to embrace. The altar pulsed.

And Rose said, "She wants more."

But not lust.

Not heat.

Not now.

"She wants trust."

Everyone turned.

"What do you mean?" Susan asked.

Rose smiled. "We’ve given her our bodies. Now she wants our minds."

Stella stood slowly. "There’s a door."

And the vines pulled back at the edge of the shrine to reveal an archway made of bone and blossom.

Jude stepped toward it, naked and unafraid.

"Do we go?" Lucy asked, rising.

"We follow," Zoey answered, already walking.

They passed through together - twelve women and one man - into the mouth of the earth, where dreams waited.

And the goddess whispered her name into all their ears at once.

The air beyond the archway was thick with the scent of wet earth and night-blooming flowers. The tunnel sloped downward, the walls slick with moss that glowed faintly blue, casting eerie shadows that danced over their bare skin