The path between the Odyssey tent and the lower workshop terraces was supposed to be quiet at this hour—just lanterns, crushed rosemary, and the distant thump of a beach stage that no longer cared about set times. Kat Brannigan had stepped out of her evening portrait session early, linen shirt rolled to the elbows, charcoal still ghosting her fingertips, mind full of cheekbones and the way light loved a collarbone. She had come to the island to teach famous women how to find power on paper. She had not come prepared for the scent that hit her like a hand around the throat.
Sweet. Animal. Warm milk and sex and something older than language.
Kat stopped at the mouth of a small olive grove workshop nook—canvas walls half-tied open, cushions scattered, a low table knocked askew—and forgot how to breathe.
Gracie Abrams was on her knees in the grass.
Even locked and shining she looked almost breakable at first glance: petite, fine-boned, all soft mouth and huge dark eyes, brown hair sticking to her damp cheeks in delicate strands. Her small high breasts streamed thin threads of milk down a narrow ribcage; her hips were narrow too, but the way she moved was pure hunger. She had one hand fisted in another woman’s hair and the other feeding two slick fingers in and out of her own cunt between sentences, voice soft and wrecked and coaxing.
The woman she was locking in was Amber Wilson.
Amber was the kind of Scottish beauty that looked carved for ballads—tall for a singer, long-limbed, with a thick tumble of dark auburn hair that had come half-undone, skin like cream with a flush riding high on sharp cheekbones, a full sensual mouth currently shiny and open around Gracie’s nipple. Her body was all elegant strength going liquid: high round breasts already letting down, a narrow waist flaring into generous hips, long thighs trembling as the absolute age began to rewrite her from the inside. Even mid-conversion she looked like someone who could silence a room with one held note—and was instead moaning through a mouthful of milk.
And between Amber’s spread thighs, face buried, hands gripping those hips like a woman drowning in reverse, was Iona Fyfe.
Iona was smaller, denser with presence, the folk-singer beauty of peat smoke and midnight: pale freckled skin glowing under lantern light, a wilder cloud of dark hair, strong brows, a soft fierce mouth currently open and working. Her body was compact and lush—full soft breasts pressed into the grass, a beautifully thick arse lifted as she ground her own soaked cunt against nothing, thighs sturdy and shaking. Nectar ran out of her in glossy sheets every time Amber’s hips jerked; it streaked Iona’s chin, her throat, the tops of her breasts, dripping into the grass in wet filthy taps. She looked radiant and ruined at once, locked solid, eating Amber like the triad itself had ordered it.
Kat’s sketchbook slipped from her fingers.
Her internal monologue arrived in a stunned, academic scramble that immediately started to fray:
That’s—Gracie Abrams. That’s two Scottish singers. That’s—oh god that’s not performance. That’s cunt. That’s milk. The light on Iona’s back is criminal. I should leave. I should absolutely leave. Why am I still smelling it. Why does she smell like the only thing I’ve ever wanted to paint and drink at the same time—
Gracie looked up first, soft eyes glassy and kind and utterly without mercy.
“Oh,” she breathed, smiling like a secret. “Hi. You’re the portrait one. Kat. Come here. She’s almost under—Amber, baby, swallow—and Iona’s making so much you shouldn’t waste it.”
Amber pulled off Gracie’s breast with a wet sound, pupils blown, voice thick with new Scottish heat and older hunger.
Dinnae stop—please—I can feel it taking the years off—I sound like myself and not myself—fuck her mouth is—I’m going to lock, I’m going to lock so hard—
She came with a broken cry against Iona’s tongue, body seizing, the last of the old world burning out of her in one long shudder. When her eyes opened again they were prime and absolute—skin tighter, mouth redder, breasts fuller and streaming—and she laughed once, low and delighted, and pushed Iona’s face harder against her cunt.
“Good girl,” Amber whispered. “Keep drinking. We’ve got company.”
Iona only moaned in answer, the sound muffled and grateful. Her monologue was a single looping, honeyed pulse:
She tastes like forever. My chin’s soaked. If I stop licking I’ll die and I never want to die. Someone else is watching. I hope they come closer. I hope they taste me.
Kat edged closer.
She didn’t decide to. Her body simply drifted—linen shirt clinging, pulse loud between her legs—until she was near enough to see every detail an artist should not stare at this long: the way nectar pulsed out of Iona in clear, thick waves whenever Amber ground down; the freckles on Iona’s shoulders darkening with sweat; the elegant filthy arch of Amber’s spine; Gracie’s small perfect breasts dripping onto Amber’s tongue again.
Kat’s beauty had always been quieter than the women she painted—mid-thirties, intelligent face, clear eyes, a soft serious mouth, brown hair usually twisted up with a pencil, a dancer’s posture from years of standing at easels, breasts medium and high under practical linen, hips gentle, hands stained and elegant. Right now that composure was cracking in real time. Her nipples had gone tight enough to hurt. Her cunt was so wet she could feel it on her thighs.
Just a taste,* she told herself, kneeling like she was approaching a composition. *For understanding. For the work. God, look at the way it catches the lantern light on her skin—look at how much she’s gushing—if I don’t put my mouth on it I’ll never be able to draw again without going mad—
She leaned in.
Iona felt the new breath on her soaked cunt and pushed back without looking, offering herself with a needy little roll of her hips. Kat’s tongue met the gush of nectar and the world ended.
Sweet. Salt. Hot. Addictive on contact. The flavour hit the back of her throat and the lock detonated like a flashbulb behind her eyes.
Kat’s monologue shredded:
Oh—oh fuck—that’s not paint—that’s not anything human—my cunt just clenched so hard I saw white—milk, I need milk, I need to be inside this, I need—
She sealed her mouth over Iona’s pussy and drank like a woman dying of thirst, tongue thrusting, nose pressed to the slick seam, hands clamping on Iona’s thick freckled thighs hard enough to bruise. Nectar flooded her. The absolute age ripped through her charcoal-stained, careful body in a single merciless wave—skin tightening, breasts growing heavier and suddenly streaming inside her shirt, mouth going plush, eyes glazing with the same soft endless hunger as the others. Years of watching beauty from a polite distance collapsed into pure participation.
Gracie made a soft delighted sound and crawled over, cupping Kat’s head, guiding her deeper.
“That’s it,” Gracie whispered, voice pure gentle ruin. “Lock in. You’re so pretty like this. Drink her. Then you’re going to paint us later with your fingers in someone’s cunt, okay?”
Kat moaned into Iona’s pussy in answer, already gone.
Amber, fully locked and radiant, pulled Kat’s linen open with impatient hands and fed her a streaming nipple the second Kat came up for air. The second swallow finished it. Kat Brannigan —portraitist, teacher, observer—locked hard, prime, dripping, and laughing once against Amber’s breast like she had never understood the word power until now.
I came here to help them find themselves on paper,* she thought, dazed and ecstatic, grinding her newly soaked cunt against Iona’s heel. *There is no paper. There is only this. I want to paint every famous cunt on this island with my tongue. I want to watch Anne Hathaway degrade someone while I shade the bruises. I want—
Iona finally pulled her shining face free, turned, and kissed Kat deep and filthy, sharing the mixed taste of Amber’s nectar and her own. Then she pushed Kat onto her back in the grass and sat on her face without ceremony while Gracie straddled Kat’s hips and Amber fed them both in turn.
Four beauties tangled under the olives:
Gracie—petite, soft-eyed, deceptively delicate, milk streaking her narrow frame as she rode Kat’s stomach and bent to suck Amber’s breast.
Amber—long, auburn, cream-skinned and newly immortal, the ballad siren turned free-use engine, fingers buried in Gracie while she watched Kat drown.
Iona—freckled, wild-haired, compact and gushing, grinding her soaked cunt over Kat’s mouth with folk-singer stamina and zero shame.
Kat—intelligent face gone slack with bliss, serious mouth stretched and shining, artist’s hands gripping Iona’s arse like the only subject that had ever mattered, body locked and streaming and already composing the next conversion in the dark behind her eyes.
The scent pouring out of the little grove thickened until it had hands.
Somewhere uphill the Odyssey tent still thundered with Anne’s orders and Scarlett’s laughter and Samantha’s grateful choked moans. Down toward the harbour Elliot Page was moving through the dark with Miley’s name like a pulse in his throat. On the beach the musicians were still feeding one another between stolen microphones.
In the grass, Kat Brannigan came for the first time as a locked woman—shaking, moaning into Iona’s cunt, nectar and milk everywhere—and the only thought left in her newly absolute mind was simple and endless:
More. Bring me more faces. I’ll lock them all. I’ll make them beautiful forever.
Gracie leaned down, kissed the corner of Kat’s soaked mouth, and whispered, almost tender,
“Workshop’s cancelled. You’re the exhibition now.”
Above them the Mediterranean stars kept quiet witness.
The island kept falling.