Page 36 of Turn That River Red

MERCY

My body is boneless. Liquid. So when Ambrose unbuckles his fly with one deft hand, I can only stare up at him—my legs still spread, the Bible a weight on my chest.

“Don’t fucking move,” he purrs, an order I wouldn’t disobey even if I could.

Then he pulls out his manhood. I have, at this point, seen exactly two penises in my life, but Ambrose’s is the first that I actually want to look at. It’s thick and hard, the skin shiny from being stretched and the tip already beading with his arousal.

“Are you going to—” I lick my lips, watching as he strokes himself, his fingers tightening rhythmically around his length. “Do you want to?—”

“Fuck you?” Ambrose drops his penis and leans over me until I feel his hardness digging into the soft flesh of my belly. When he speaks, his breath blows softly across my skin. “Do you want that?”

I do want it. My entire body is burning for it. But instead of telling him that, instead of reaching down and sliding himinside me the way I do for Reverend Gunner, I whisper, “I can’t.”

Ambrose runs his thumb over my lips. “That’s not what I asked.”

Then he pulls back, situating himself so he’s kneeling over me, and begins to stroke himself. Even though I’m still reeling from his mouth, heat coils inside me again as I watch him pleasure himself, his hand moving slow and languorous up and down his length.

“I want you too,” I whisper, my voice trembling with fear. “But I can’t. I have to tell them what I saw?—”

Something flashes in Ambrose’s eyes. An unreadable bolt of lightning “Didn’t I make you forget about that?”

He had, actually. And he’s making me forget it again, the way he’s quickening his strokes, smearing around the liquid beading out from the thick mushroom of his head. There’s a word for what’s between his legs, and it’s not penis or manhood. It’scock, a word that makes my cheeks flush. Hiscock—thick and veiny, straining for release—is pointed right at me.

And I don’t want to it be anywhere else.

“Well?” he prompts. “Didn’t I?”

“Y-yes,” I stammer out. “But I can’t?—”

“We won’t.” He’s still stroking. “Don’t get me wrong, Mercy. I’m going to fuck you.” He grins, teeth sharp and predatory, and thrusts into his fist. “But not now. Not when we’re rushed.”

My breath catches. I’m not sure what to say to that. That I want it, desperately? That we shouldn’t be doing any of this?

“Right now,” Ambrose says. “I want to baptize you.”

And just like that, I’m not thinking about the nightmare I found this morning. The blasphemy of his words sends lust coursing through my core—an angry, terrifying lust. I’m afraid of it, but I also want more of it.

“W-what?” I stammer out stupidly.

“You heard me.” His breath has quickened. His voice hasgone ragged. “You’re mine, Mercy. Not Reverend Gunner’s. Do you understand that?”

I don’t look at his face when I answer him. I look at his cock.

“Yes.”

“Good. I know he’s going to want to touch you again, and I know you can’t say no.” Ambrose’s eyes flutter shut. A vein bulges on the side of his neck. I can almost feel his tension as my own—that agonizing, pressurized heat. “If he makes you go to him, go to him. But you’ll still be baptized in my name.”

He throws his head back and groans and I whimper and have a sudden, delirious thought that I need to throw the Bible off to the side, but it’s too late. Ambrose’s groan turns to a roar and he thrusts his hips toward me and ribbons of warm, thick cum splatter across my cheek and my neck and the Bible, still open to Song of Songs.

I stare at him, stunned and far more aroused than I am disgusted. He squeezes his cock twice more, then drops his hand and lowers his head to meet my gaze.

“Look how fucking beautiful you are,” he mutters. “Marked by my cum like that.”

I should hate this. I should feel used and degraded. But Ambrose looks at me with the kind of worshipful expression I’ve only seen when men pray, and so instead I feel more beautiful than I ever have in my entire life.

“Do you want to taste me?” he murmurs, already dipping his fingers in the cum dripping down my chin. “Eat of my body?”

I can’t answer that, not with words. But I want it. I’ve never wanted anything more. And so I drop my mouth open like I’m about to receive communion.