Chapter 23: The Interview Begins
The villa’s new skin smelled of fresh-cut teak and drying plaster. The physical scars of the attack were gone, repaired in a whirlwind of communal labor that saw villagers working alongside hired craftsmen until the structure was not just restored, but fortified, its lines cleaner, its presence more assertive on the cliff edge. The psychological scars, however, were a different texture in the air—a heightened awareness, a simmering vigilance that hummed just below the surface of their daily rhythm.
Bruce was shirtless, mixing mortar for a new retaining wall with his bare hands, when Wayan approached. The foreman’s expression was a blend of wariness and amusement.
“There is a woman at the gate, Tuan. A reporter. She says she has an appointment, but I have no record.”
Bruce didn’t look up, his hands deep in the gritty gray paste. “I don’t give appointments.”
“She is… persistent. And she carries credentials from a major European syndicate. She says she wants to discuss sustainable development and the ‘unfortunate incident.’”
That made Bruce stop. He wiped his hands on his shorts, leaving dusty streaks. The “unfortunate incident.” A neat, bloodless phrase for a night of screaming metal and dying men. His eyes narrowed. “Send her away.”
“I tried. She is sitting on a stone by the road. She says she will wait.”
From the shaded veranda, Lena’s voice cut through, cool and analytical. “If we send her away, she writes a story about the reclusive, paranoid millionaire who survived a mysterious attack. If we control the narrative, we control the story.” She was feeding Arjuna a bottle, her gaze steady on Bruce. “We invite her in. We show her exactly what we want her to see.”
Ketut, weaving a ceremonial offering from frangipani blossoms, smiled without looking up. “She has already seen him. Her heart is a drum beating against her ribs. It is not the story she came for that will leave here.”
Camille stepped out, a glass of lime water in hand. She followed Ketut’s gaze toward the gate, invisible beyond the foliage. “Is she pretty?”
“That is not the question,” Ketut murmured.
Bruce let out a short breath. The constant calculation was exhausting. But Lena was right. Silence was a vacuum, and nature—and the press—abhorred a vacuum. “Fine. Let her in. But she stays in the open areas. Nothing private.”
When Anya walked onto the terrace ten minutes later, the rhythm of the place stuttered. She was young, maybe twenty, with long brown hair streaked by actual sun, not a salon. She was short, but built with a surreal, hypnotic proportionality: slender waist flaring into hips and an ass so full and round in her tailored linen trousers it seemed a gravitational anomaly. Her face was an angel’s—wide, bright green eyes, a smattering of freckles, a politely curious mouth. But her gaze, after a fleeting, inevitable drop to Bruce’s dust-coated chest and the unmistakable, heavy bulge in his simple shorts, locked onto his eyes and stayed there. The contact was startling in its directness.
“Mr. Thorne? Anya Voss. Thank you for seeing me.”
Her voice was mellifluous, lightly accented—German, perhaps. She offered a hand. His engulfed it, and he felt a subtle tremor in her fingers, a quickening pulse at her wrist. Not fear. Something else entirely.
“Bruce. This is Camille, Lena, and Ketut.” He gestured loosely, not letting go of her hand for a beat too long. “Our son, Arjuna.”
Anya’s green eyes took them in, and Bruce watched her journalist’s mask slip for a microsecond. She saw not a billionaire and his harem, but something else—a unity, a serene and potent symmetry that clearly defied her prepared categories. She recovered smoothly. “A beautiful family. And a breathtaking home. The restoration is remarkable. It’s as if the… trouble… never happened.”
“Trouble has a way of fertilizing new growth,” Lena said, her tone dry. She set the bottle down. “You’re here to talk about the attack?”
Anya accepted a seat, setting her recorder on the table between them. “And the work you do. The community projects. I believe context is everything. The world saw a shocking video of paramilitary violence. I’d like to show them what was being defended.”
The interview was competent. She asked about the foundation’s water purification initiatives, the reforestation projects. Bruce answered succinctly, his voice a low rumble. Camille spoke with passion about the school. Lena provided crisp data. Ketut mostly listened, her dark eyes seeing the spaces between Anya’s words.
But the subtext was a thick, humming wire. Anya’s pen would pause. Her eyes would drift from her notes back to Bruce, tracing the line of his shoulder, the shift of muscle in his thigh. She’d catch herself, her cheeks flushing the faintest pink. She was professional, but her body was broadcasting a different, more primal interest.
During a lull as Ketut went to fetch more tea, Anya’s gaze fell on the stark, beautiful lines of a new penjor pole erected at the terrace edge, offering ribbons to the wind. “It’s all so… alive here. The energy is different. I’ve interviewed powerful men before. CEOs, politicians. They feel like dead stars. You feel like… a ley line.”
Bruce leaned back, the worn canvas of his shorts straining conspicuously. “Maybe you’re just sensitive to the landscape.”
“Maybe,” she breathed, her eyes dropping again to his lap, then forcing themselves back up. A struggle she was losing. “The man in the video… he said you were a god. The men who came here, they called you that before they… The rumor in certain circles is that you cannot be harmed.” She was off-script now, leaning forward, her blouse gaping slightly to reveal the soft curve of a small, perfect breast. “Is it true?”
The air changed. Camille and Lena exchanged a glance. Ketut returned, setting the tea tray down silently. She met Lena’s eyes and gave the faintest nod. Knowing.
Bruce stood up abruptly. The movement was fluid, powerful. He walked to the balustrade, looking out at the sea. “Truth is what people believe. Do you believe it, Anya?”
He turned to face her. The setting sun haloed him, casting his face in shadow but illuminating the sheer, monumental physicality of him—the god in the machine of flesh and bone. Her recorder was forgotten. Her lips were parted.
“I don’t know what I believe,” she whispered. “I need to see.”
It wasn’t a journalistic request. It was a surrender.
“See then,” he said.
He hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his shorts and pushed them down. His cock, already half-hard from her relentless, hungry attention, sprang free. It was a obscene, beautiful weapon in the golden light, thick and long and heavy, the head a blunt, ruddy promise. Anya’s hand flew to her mouth. A stifled sound escaped—not shock, but awe. Her green eyes were huge, drinking him in, tracing every vein, the formidable girth, the sheer implausible reality of him.
“Oh, my God,” she breathed, the words a prayer.
“Not yet,” Bruce said, his voice a dark caress. “But you’re getting warmer.”
He took a step toward her. She didn’t retreat. She stood, her body trembling. Camille was already moving, coming behind Anya, her hands gently pushing the reporter’s linen jacket off her shoulders. “He asked you a question,” Camille murmured in her ear, unbuttoning Anya’s blouse. “Do you believe?”
Anya let them undress her, her breath coming in short pants. Her body was a masterpiece of youthful exaggeration—the insane, lush ass, the small, pert breasts with pink, eager nipples, the elegant line of her thighs. Lena joined, removing Anya’s trousers and plain cotton panties, revealing a neatly trimmed triangle of brown hair.
“On your knees,” Bruce said, his cock now fully erect, jutting toward her face.
Anya sank down without hesitation, the marble cool against her skin. She looked up at him, a supplicant. She reached out a trembling hand, wrapping her fingers around the base. She couldn’t close her thumb and forefinger. A whimper of pure desire escaped her. She leaned forward, her tongue darting out to taste the bead of moisture at the tip. She swirled it, then opened her mouth, trying to take him in.
It was a futile, beautiful struggle. She could barely get the head past her lips. She gagged immediately, tears springing to her eyes, but she didn’t pull away. She sucked on what she could, her hands working the mighty shaft, smearing her own saliva over it.
“She wants it,” Lena observed, her own voice husky. She was touching herself, two fingers sliding inside her own wetness as she watched. “She wants that god-cock to ruin her. Don’t you, reporter?”
“Yes,” Anya gasped, pulling off with a wet pop. “Please. I need to feel it. I need to know.”
Bruce pulled her up by her hair, not gently. He turned her, bending her over the low, sun-warmed marble table where her recorder still sat. He kicked her feet apart. Her spectacular ass was presented to him, the pink, glistening slit of her pussy already swollen and ready between the rounded hemispheres.
“You came for a story,” he growled, spitting into his hand and slicking his length. “Here’s the exclusive.”
He pressed the broad head against her entrance. She was tight, impossibly so. He pushed. Anya screamed, a raw, tearing sound of pleasure-pain as her body was stretched beyond any previous limit. He didn’t stop. He fed her inch after brutal inch, his hands gripping her hips, anchoring her as she writhed. She was so small, the invasion so total, he could see the outline of himself distending her flat stomach.
“Fuck! It’s… it’s too much!” she cried, but her hands were clutching the table edge, pushing back against him.
“It’s exactly enough,” he corrected, beginning to move.
The fuck was a slow, devastating piston. Each withdrawal made her whimper with loss; each deep, bottoming-out thrust made her shriek. The slapping impact of his flesh against hers was loud, rhythmic, primal. Camille knelt beside Anya’s head, guiding her mouth to her own wet cunt. “Eat me while he breaks you,” Camille commanded, and Anya obeyed, her tongue lapping desperately, her moans vibrating against Camille’s clit.
Lena moved behind Bruce, pressing her naked body against his back, biting his shoulder, her hand reaching around to play with Anya’s clit as he slammed into her. “She’s going to come,” Lena chanted. “She’s going to come on a story she can never file.”
Bruce’s pace increased, becoming punishing. The table scraped across the marble floor with every drive. Anya’s cries became incoherent, a babbling stream of “yes” and “more” and “ohgodohgod.” Her body clenched around him in a series of violent, rippling orgasms that squeezed his cock like a velvet fist.
He felt his own climax co
Continue story after provided line
Her body clenched around him in a series of violent, rippling orgasms that squeezed his cock like a velvet fist.
He felt his own climax coiling, a seismic pressure building at the base of his spine. He dragged Anya up by her hair, her back against his chest, so he could feel her heart hammering through her ribs. “Where do you want it?” he growled into her ear, his hips still driving up into her soaked, stretched cunt. “In this greedy little pussy? Or on that pretty face you use for lies?”
“Inside,” she begged, her head lolling against his shoulder. “Fill me up. I want to carry it with me.”
He slammed her back down over the table, pinning her with the full weight of his torso. His thrusts lost all rhythm, becoming frantic, deep jackhammer punches that shook her entire frame. “Then take it. Take every fucking drop.”
With a roar that seemed to vibrate the marble under their feet, he came. Jets of hot seed pumped into her in seemingly endless pulses, flooding her, a claiming so profound she felt it warming her from the inside. She spasmed around him again, a secondary, shocked climax milking him for the last of it.
He stayed buried in her for a long minute, both of them dripping sweat onto the table. Finally, he pulled out. The sight was obscene: her used, gaping hole leaking his cum onto the polished stone in a thick, white trickle. She collapsed, boneless.
Camille and Lena helped her up, their touches now practical, almost sisterly. They guided her, wobbling, to an outdoor shower carved into the cliffside. Ketut, having watched the entire spectacle with serene detachment, finally approached Bruce with a damp cloth. She cleaned him with ritual care, her fingers tracing the still-throbbing length of him.
“She will not write the story she intended,” Ketut stated softly.
“What will she write?” Bruce asked, his breathing steadying.
“Nothing. She will ask to stay.”
Anya spent the next hour in a daze, washed, dressed in borrowed clothes that hung loosely on her. They sat her at the long dining table, a bowl of rich curry placed before her. She ate mechanically, her green eyes wide, distant. Finally, she put her spoon down. She looked at Bruce, then at each of the women.
“None of my questions matter,” she said, her voice hollow. “The grants. The incident. It’s all… set dressing. You’re real. This is real.” She gestured vaguely at the air, the cliff, them. “What happened to me… I’ve never felt anything like that. It rewired me.”
Lena sipped her water. “It tends to.”
“I can’t go back,” Anya whispered, more to herself than them. “I sit in some editorial meeting in Berlin and talk about export quotas? After this?” She looked at Bruce, a desperate hope in her eyes. “Let me stay. Not as a reporter. As… whatever you need. An assistant. A gardener. Anything.”
Bruce studied her. The hunger in her wasn’t for a scoop anymore. It was for the source of the feeling he’d just drilled into her. It was a need for the transcendent, messy reality of this place. A need to belong to it.
Bruce looked at Camille first, who smiled—a warm, welcoming curl of her lips that held memories of her own nervous beginnings. Then Lena, who gave a single, sharp nod, her intelligence assessing and approving the potential utility of a journalist turned devotee. Finally, Ketut, who had complete acceptance in her gaze, seeing the inevitable pattern unfolding as clearly as the strands of her offering.
The silence stretched, filled only by the ocean’s rhythm and Anya’s shallow, hopeful breaths. Bruce’s voice, when it came, wasn’t the god’s roar from the terrace. It was quieter, more dangerous in its precision. “Do you know what it means to stay?”
Anya wiped a strand of gold-streaked hair from her damp forehead. “No,” she whispered. “Tell me.”
“This family becomes everything,” he said, his swirling hazel eyes pinning her to the chair. “We do everything together. We make all decisions together. We live for each other. We take care of this land and its people.” He leaned forward, the table creaking under his weight. “There is no going back. My wives say yes. Are you prepared for all of it?”
Anya didn’t respond right away. Her bright green eyes traveled over Camille’s generous curves, saw the steadfast pleasure there. She looked at Lena’s fierce, proud posture, at the unshakeable certainty in her dark gaze. She lingered on Ketut, whose serene smile held depths of ancient wisdom and pure, fierce love. She saw their happiness, their acceptance, a unity that made her former life seem like a pale, cardboard cutout.
Finally, she looked back at Bruce, at the raw power and the promise of feeling that alive again. A soft, disbelieving laugh escaped her. “How could I ever be anywhere else?”
Bruce nodded, a single dip of his shaved head. “Welcome home, Anya. Tonight, we bring her to the old temple and perform the ritual.”
The path to the old temple was a vein of black soil through knotted roots and whispering ferns. The moon was a sharp sliver, casting hard shadows. Anya walked behind Ketut, her borrowed sarong brushing her ankles, her heart a frantic bird in her throat. The air grew thicker, cooler, smelling of wet stone and decaying blooms. The temple emerged from the jungle gloom—a low, moss-covered platform of carved black rock, surrounded by looming, weathered statues whose features had been softened by centuries of rain.
“It is not a blessing,” Ketut said softly, not turning around. “It is a merging. The land will know you. His essence will change you. You will feel it… rewriting you.”
“I want it,” Anya said, the words a truth pulled from her core.
On the platform, Bruce stood waiting. He was naked. The moon glinted off the ritual lines of ash drawn over his chest and arms by Ketut, symbols that seemed to move in the faint light. His cock, even at rest, was a heavy, daunting presence. Camille and Lena stood at the edges, holding small clay lamps that threw dancing light onto the ancient carvings of entwined bodies and cosmic serpents.
“Remove your clothes,” Bruce said. His voice was the jungle night itself.
Anya’s fingers fumbled with the knot of her sarong. It fell away. The cool air pebbled her skin, tightened her nipples into sharp points. She felt terrifyingly exposed, and utterly ready.
“Lie on the stone,” Ketut instructed, guiding her to the center of the platform. The rock was shockingly cold against her back. Ketut anointed her forehead, her breasts, her belly with oil that smelled of clove and iron. “The old blood is here. The stone drinks memory. Tonight, it drinks you, and gives you back anew.”
Bruce knelt between her splayed thighs. His hands, rough and warm, pushed her knees wider, exposing her completely to the moon and the watching stone faces. He didn’t touch her with his fingers. He leaned forward, the broad, blunt head of his cock nudging against her slick entrance. He looked down into her eyes, his own hazel whirlpools in the dark. “This will tear you apart,” he stated, no malice, just fact.
“I know,” she breathed.
He pushed.
The invasion was slower than on the terrace, more deliberate, infinitely more profound. There was no frantic passion to distract from the sheer, impossible physics of it. Anya’s back arched off the cold stone as her body screamed in protest, then in stunned surrender, as he forged deeper. She felt packed, stuffed, each inch a burning, stretching revelation. A high, thin sound escaped her clenched teeth.
“Breathe through it,” Camille murmured from beside her, stroking her hair. “Let it in. It gets better. It gets amazing.”
Bruce sheathed himself to the hilt, his pelvis grinding against her, his weight pressing her into the unyielding rock. He was still. Buried. A living column of heat inside her freezing core. Then he began to move.
It was a slow, relentless drag. Withdrawal was a shocking emptiness, a sense of loss so acute she whimpered. The return was a claiming, a deep, grinding fill that brushed something inside her she’d never felt before. Each thrust rocked her whole body against the stone. The slap of skin was absorbed by the dense greenery around them.
“Look at me,” Bruce commanded, his voice strained with his own control.
She forced her eyes open. His face was a mask of concentrated power, veins standing out on his neck. Seeing him like this, inside her, working her over this sacred stone, unraveled her completely. The pain melted, transmuted into a piercing, electric pleasure that started in her stretched cunt and radiated out to her fingertips.
“Oh fuck, oh fuck, it’s…” she babbled.
“It’s what?” he grunted, pistoning harder now, the pace increasing. The sound of their joining was wet, obscenely loud in the ritual silence.
“It’s everywhere,” she sobbed. The sensation was beyond localized friction. It felt like the ground itself was pulsing up through the stone into her spine, meeting the crashing waves of feeling he was driving into her front. Her orgasm didn’t build; it detonated. A white-hot seizure of her entire nervous system that clamped her around him like a vice. She screamed, the sound swallowed by the jungle.
He roared in answer, his control shattering. His thrusts became short, brutal stabs. He was hitting her deepest wall, the thick root of his cock battering her cervix with every drive.
“Gonna fill this new cunt,” he snarled, animalistic. “Gonna plant my seed in this fresh fucking soil. You take it. You take all of it for this family.”
With a final, wrenching grind, he came. She felt the hot, urgent flood, jet after jet, deep in her womb. It was a scalding, claiming baptism. The ritual was complete. He collapsed over her, his sweat-slicked chest crushing her breasts, his breath hot in her ear.
For a long time, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing and the jungle’s night chorus returning. The stone beneath her no longer felt cold. It felt humming, alive, a part of her. Bruce pulled out slowly, and a rush of his release spilled from her, a warm trickle on her thigh and the waiting stone.
Camille and Lena were there, helping her up. Her legs wouldn’t hold her. They supported her, their touches firm and loving. Ketut approached, examining Anya’s eyes in the lamplight. The bright green was still there, but beneath it, a new, latent shimmer, like light on deep water.
“It is done,” Ketut said, satisfied. “The land knows its new daughter.”
Anya looked at her hands. They were steady. The frantic, searching energy that had driven her from Berlin was gone. In its place was a profound, settled certainty. A belonging. She looked at the family surrounding her—the god, his wives, this place of stone and spirit.
She was home. The story was over. Her life had just begun.