Page 96 of Turn That River Red

I turn toward him, and I’m not terribly surprised by what I see: Ambrose smiling gently down at me, his mouth smeared with my blood.

“I know, baby.” He pushes my hair out of my eyes, then runs his thumb over my cheek, following the tracks of my tears. “I can’t believe you didn’t stop me.”

I sway, woozy from what we did. From all his violent words, from the pain in my shoulder, from the lingering bursts of pleasure between my thighs.

“Do you really want to eat me?” I ask, my words slurred.

Ambrose smiles, my blood gleaming on his teeth. “Fuck, yes, I do. But I’d rather have you around, so I won’t.” He presses his forehead against mine. “But I had to show you all of me. I needed you toseeit. If you don’t want to stay?—”

I kiss him.

I do it without thinking—it just feels like the right thing to do. Even if tasting my own blood startles me. Even if he pulls me roughly up against him, and it makes pain bloom in my shoulder. When I cry out, he deepens the kiss to silence me. For a moment, I wonder if he really will try to eat me someday.

But the thought doesn’t disgust me. It floods me with warmth, actually, that Ambrose would want me enough to pull me into him like that.

I break the kiss with a gasp, still tasting my blood. Ambrose smiles at me, looking as much like the devil as he ever has. “You really aren’t what I expected when I first met you in Gunner’s office.”

I blush and wipe the back of my hand across my mouth. It comes away bloody. My shoulder’s still burning, too.

“I need to dress that,” Ambrose says.

It takes a moment to realize he means the bite. I hadn’t looked at it yet, but I do now. It’s messy and violent, a jaggedhunk of my flesh missing from the familiar curve of my shoulder. I can see the muscle tissue, impossibly red and shiny.

I feel dizzy. That part of me is inside him. Forever.

“I don’t want it to get infected.” Ambrose guides me down so I’m sitting on the bed, then kisses my temple. “Wait here.”

He ducks into the attached bathroom, and all I can do is sit and stare dazedly at the doorway, listening to him dig around in the cabinets. His vicious words circle through my head. All that talk about killing Reverend Gunner.Every man who touched you against your will.

There have only been three of them. Deacon Price, Reverend Gunner, Pastor Sullivan. And one of them is already dead.

Heat coils in me, strange and unfamiliar. Ambrose steps out of the bathroom holding the first aid supplies and comes and sits down next to me. His closeness is a comfort.

“This is going to scar,” he says, wiping the blood away with a soft towel. I suck air through my teeth. “Nothing I can do about that.”

“I don’t mind.”

Ambrose fixes me with his dark eyes. “You don’t really mean that.”

I look right back at him. “I do, actually. I could have stopped it but I didn’t.”

Ambrose is the first to break eye contact, dropping the towel on the bed and reaching for the antiseptic. “You’re full of surprises, humanita.”

“So are you.”

He grins. Squeezes a dollop of the antiseptic directly on the bite, which makes me cry out. “Yes, but I don’t imagine any of my surprises have been particularly pleasant.”

I don’t say anything, just bite down on my lip as he gently works the antiseptic into the wound. It hurts, but I can tell he’strying to make it hurt less. And I imagine that’s not easy for him.

“I have a friend,” Ambrose says softly. “Sawyer. He’s like me. And he’s got a girl like you.”

I lift my gaze to his face. He’s not looking at me, though. “What do you mean?”

“She’s human. I mentioned her to you once. Told you she’s Charlotte’s friend. And she is.” He picks up a pad of gauze and presses it against the wound. “But she’s also Sawyer’s girl. And he bit her in the shoulder, left a scar a bit like this. Yours will be a lot worse, though.”

I frown, watching Ambrose work. I still can’t get over how gentle he is, especially compared with just a few moments ago. “Does that happen a lot?” I say. “For, um, people like you—” I almost saiddemons, “—to marry humans?”

“They’re not married.” Ambrose looks at me. “Don’t know if they ever will. But they’retogether, and yeah, it happens. Not frequently, but it happens.”

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