Page 66 of Turn That River Red

“It’s closed up,” she whispers. “It shouldn’t—that’s impossible.” She looks at me, her eyes wet with tears. “You’re telling the truth, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” Something surges up in me, a kind of strange protectivedesire. “I know I lied to you, Mercy. I’m not a traveling preacher anymore, although I was, a long time ago?—”

“How long?”

“A little under two hundred years.”

She goes pale again and kind of swoons against me. I can feel her blood pressure dropping, and I scoop my hand behind her head and prop her up.

“But there’s a lot I didn’t lie to you about,” I say fiercely. “Every time I touched you—I meant that. I did. And when I say I’m not going to kill you, that’s not a lie, either.”

“Why not?” she whispers. “What’s so special about me?”

The question brings me up short. Because I don’t actually know.

I wonder, briefly, if this is what Sawyer felt like the first time he saw Edie.

“It just feels wrong,” I finally say. “To kill you.”

Then, because I’m not sure what else to do, I kiss her, taking her face in both hands and pulling her up close to me. She yields to me as beautifully as she did in the Church of the Well bunker, her lips melting into mine. For a long time, all I do is kiss her mouth, slow and sweet, neither of us making a sound.

And then I start working my way down, kissing over her throat to taste the salt of my own blood. Mercy whimpers softly, her hand coming up to tangle in my hair, and I keep going, over the place where her breasts strain against the blood-soaked fabric of her dress. Then I slide her off my lap so I can go even lower, until I’m able to push up her skirt and find the treasure hidden inside.

“What are you do?—”

I bite the inside of her thigh, making her yelp. “Licking you clean.”

“You can’t,” she gasps, shifting her hips into my face.

I don’t tell her how much I like the taste of blood. Baby steps. But I do drag my tongue along the blood caking herthighs until I find the soft silk of her pussy—and effectively silence any of her protestations. Mercy falls backward, hips bucking up as I dive into her blood-encrusted cunt, devouring my taste in hers with long swipes of my tongue.

“Ambrose,” she whimpers, tangling her hands in my hair.

“Be quiet and come for me,” I growl before attacking her pussy again, parting her lips open with my tongue so I can give her a good fucking. She groans her appreciation, thighs already starting to tremble around my ears.

And she thought she couldn’t come.

I chuckle at the thought as I withdraw my tongue from her pussy so I can lick the blood away from her clit, which just makes her moan and writhe on the couch. I know she’s close; all the signs are there in her body, all that fluttering and pounding and rushing. And that just makes me eat her harder, my own blood bursting on my tongue. It’s almost enough for me to imagine that I’m devouring her for real, pulling her into me bite by bite.

“Ambrose!” she cries, arching her back with ecstasy. “You shouldn’t be doing this—The blood?—”

I tear myself away from her sweet cunt to look at her over the ruined mess of her dress. “I’m the fucking boogeyman, remember?” I grin at her, knowing my mouth is smeared with my blood and cum and her arousal, and Mercy’s fear spikes, and I nearly come in my goddamn pants again.

“You like this,” she whispers.

“No.” I shake my head as I slide two fingers inside her to stroke along her inner wall. That undoes her, the way I knew it would. “No, I fucking love it.”

Then I dive between her legs again, licking the blood away as I fingerfuck her closer and closer to release. Mercy’s leg muscles quiver wildly, and her heartbeat is like a thunderstorm filling up the room.

“Come on, humanita,” I murmur. “Come for me.”

Then I press my lips to her swollen clit and suck.

Mercy screams, a beautiful shattering sound that goes straight to my dick. Her orgasm moves through her body in waves, and I keep licking her—licking up my blood, licking up her desire.

I keep licking until she’s nothing but a quivering mess, melting at my command.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

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