Page 20 of Turn That River Red

“That’s your clit,” he says. “And something tells me the good Reverend Gunner has never found it once in his miserable life. He can’t be bothered.”

Some part of me—the part of me not currently quivering with pleasure—knows I should be offended on Reverend Gunner’s behalf. But the rest of me kind of curls inward thatthis man, this liar who nonetheless still knows how to lay on hands, can see straight into my marriage after a single day.

“Now this,” Ambrose says, and he hooks his finger up inside me, pressing against something that makes me keen and arch my back. “They call that the G-spot. But from what I understand, that’s just your clit, too.”

He evens out the pressure of his touch, and I can barely stand it, all this heat inside me. I don’t understand how he knows my body so well, or why he wants to do this to me just so I can show him where to access the adoption records. In truth, I keep waiting for him to give up and take out his penis and put it inside me the way Reverend Gunner does. The way Pastor Sullivan does too, whenever I’m asked to serve him.

“You touch these things together,” Ambrose says. “And you’ll come.”

He’s going faster now, and I can feel an embarrassing flood of wetness between my legs. I know I’m probably staining the couch. Dirtying his fingers. But Ambrose doesn’t seem to care. He just leans over me, his face close to mine. For a moment, I wonder if he’s going to kiss me.

“How does that feel?” he whispers.

I don’t have the words to describe how it feels. I feel vulnerable and exposed. I feel like I’m burning alive. I feel like something’s trying to split me apart and I want it to happen but I’m also afraid it’s going to happen.

All that, and what comes out of my mouth is?—

“I think I need to use the bathroom.”

Immediately, humiliation floods through my cheeks, and I grab Ambrose’s wrist and shove it away and move to get up. I shouldn’t be here. I belong to Reverend Gunner. And yet?—

The absence of Ambrose’s touch is almost painful.

Ambrose pushes me back down on the couch. “You don’t need to use the bathroom.”

“Yes, I do.” I try to push my skirt down, but he stops me.An agitation works up between my legs. A faint, treasonous tugging. I want him to touch me again.

But hecan’t.

“How about this?” He slides his palm against my nether lips, making me gasp and buck up into touch. He laughs. “I know you’re enjoying yourself.”

“It feels like?—”

“Like you’re going to piss yourself?”

He arches an eyebrow mischievously, and I jerk my gaze away from him, my face flaming with heat.

“I told you. I think I need to use the bathroom.”

“And I’m telling you that you don’t.” He grabs my chin with his free hand and tilts my face toward him as the heel of his other palm grinds against my clit.

His fingers move through my slipperiness, my humiliating wetness, and find their way back to their previous positions: one inside me, one outside, both moving in tandem. I keen and squirm beneath Ambrose’s weight, that pressure building up again in my belly.

Ambrose presses his lips to my ear. It almost feels like a kiss.

“If you need to piss,” he rasps. “I want you to piss on my fingers.”

“What?” I try to sit up again, but Ambrose pins me down and rubs me faster, his finger sliding in and out of me with a steady rhythm that feels dangerous and sinful and fiery and impossibly good. Like Heaven and Hell got all entwined together.

Just like Ambrose, I think distantly.

“I mean it.” He works me with his entire arm, his breath hot against the sensitive skin of my neck. “I want you to let go, Mercy. If that means pissing on my hand, then fucking piss on me.”

His words shoot straight through me—their vulgarity. Their harshness. They aren’t the words of a preacher.

And yet Ambrose prayed over me like a preacher. He talks like a preacher, when he wants to.

But he clearly doesn’t want to right now. He keeps rubbing me with that same frantic rhythm, and even though it feels slatternly, I can’t help but match that rhythm with my hips, until the two of us are locked together, moving as one.

---