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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

MERCY

M y 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 him inside 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’s cock , a word that makes my cheeks flush. His cock —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 has gone 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.

Ambrose grins and slides his cum-sticky fingers across my tongue. I wrap my lips around them and suck, moaning softly at the saltiness of him. He tastes like Reverend Gunner. But he also tastes divine .

“That’s it.” He pulls his fingers out and scoops up more cum from my cheek. “Do you want more, my greedy little princess?”

He doesn’t wait for a response this time, just sides his fingers into my mouth again, and I lick it off his fingers, my hips writhing against the sofa.

“You can have that any time you want.” Ambrose pushes off the couch and takes the Bible out of my hands and slams it closed.

That feels like too much. “You need to clean it!” I cry out, sitting up.

“I need to clean you,” he says. “The book can wait.”

He tosses it on the end table, as if the matter’s closed, and then disappears into his hallway. I stare at the Bible. It’s old. Obviously well-used. I don’t understand how he can just let it be desecrated like that.

He doesn’t see it as a desecration , whispers some voice deep in my head. A voice that feels dangerous.

Ambrose steps back into the living room holding a damp bath towel. I can’t speak as he helps me up to sitting, then settles down beside me and gently, carefully, wipes his seed away from my skin.

“As much as I want to leave it,” he says softly. “I can’t have Reverend Gunner seeing you like this.”

“Don’t talk about him.” I’m surprised by the vehemence in my words. So is Ambrose, it seems, because he jerks his dark eyes up to meet mine.

“Feeling guilty?” He arches an eyebrow.

“No.” I force myself to meet Ambrose’s gaze. “But I don’t want to think about him. Not right now.”

“Fair enough.” Ambrose smiles softly—sadly, I think, and I wonder if he doesn’t want to think about Reverend Gunner, either. I can’t say I blame him.

He finishes cleaning me up, then tosses the towel on the ground and kisses me softly. I don’t want to get up from the couch, even though I know I need to. I have obligations outside of this cabin. What’s happened here—it leaves me dizzy and hot. But it won’t last. It can’t last.

It was just a temporary oblivion to help me forget the horrors of last night.

“I should go,” I mutter, pulling away from Ambrose, straightening up my dress. He doesn’t protest. Doesn’t try to stop me. I run my hands over my hair, trying to smooth it down, and in the flurry, I catch Ambrose’s dark, heavy gaze.

“Do you want me to set up the prayer circles again?” he asks. It takes me a moment to register to his question.

“Y-yes. That would be—that would be good, I think.” I stare at him, lounging on the couch, his arm stretched over the back cushions. I don’t want to leave. I have to leave. “I can’t believe this happened again.”

Images flash through my head. Burl’s gaping neck. His bright red blood. His outstretched arms. I try to force them out.

“There are a lot of monsters in this world,” Ambrose says.

“Do you think they’ll catch this one?” Assuming it’s not the devil . But I don’t say that out loud.

Ambrose studies me for a long time, like he doesn’t know how to answer.

“I’m sure they will,” he finally says.

Reverend Gunner’s office is thick with panic. When I come in through the front door, Mrs. Harrison is talking with Mrs. Sullivan, their heads tilted together, their voices low and urgent. They both look up at me, but it’s only Mrs. Harrison who rushes over, her arms outstretched.

“Are you all right, Mercy? I heard you saw the body.”

I let her pull me into an embrace, even though I’m afraid she’ll smell Ambrose on me. But of course her hug is as quick as it always is. Mrs. Sullivan watches me coolly from afar. She knows what her husband did to me.

“Yes, it was—I didn’t mean to, but—” I try to offer a brave smile. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I know. It’s awful,” she says. “Just awful. We’re having a prayer meeting tonight. We have to drive the devil out.”

“Yes, we do.” Mrs. Sullivan’s heels click against the linoleum as she comes to join us. “We need to drive the sin out.”

She looks at me when she says that, and I swallow back my sudden bolt of fear. Even though I know she’s not talking about Ambrose.

Mrs. Harrison clears her throat. “Mercy, you should join us, of course. And mark your door. I’ll make a charm for you.”

I glance sideways at Mrs. Sullivan, but she doesn’t say anything.

“I know Reverend Gunner wants to speak with you,” Mrs. Harrison says quickly. “He’s meeting with Deacon Price right now to set up twenty-four-hour patrols around the compound.”

“They should have done that after Raul,” Mrs. Sullivan says. “That’s why we have the Soldiers of God in the first place. To protect us from our enemies.”

“These aren’t human enemies,” Mrs. Harrison says, shaking her head. “It’s the devil. I can feel it.”

I think of Burl stretched across the fence just like the Savior, his head dropped against his chest. Whatever sinful magic Ambrose worked to help me forget has faded.

Before I can say anything, however, Reverend Gunner’s door bangs open. He comes out with Pastor Sullivan and Deacon Price, along with a couple of Deacon Price’s favorite soldiers. It all feels so awful and so familiar. There’s that same sick coil around my stomach, the constant, shivering reminder that the church campus isn’t safe the way it’s supposed to be .

“There you are,” Reverend Gunner says. “I was concerned when Pastor Echeverría called me.”

Hearing him say Ambrose’s name makes my skin crawl. I straighten up my shoulders. “I’m sorry,” I say. “But I panicked. I know I should have gone to you?—”

It’s the right thing to say, of course. Reverend Gunner’s expression softens a little. The other two hang back, watching us. Especially Deacon Price. I know he wants to question me. He questioned me after Raul.

“Of course you did,” Reverend Gunner says softly. “This is a lot for a woman like you to have to deal with.”

Then he does something he never does, which is walk right up to me and hook his fingers under my chin to tilt my gaze up to meet his. My heart is frantic, remembering how Ambrose did the same thing. Even though the position couldn’t, at this moment, feel more different.

“I know this is upsetting,” he says softly. “I know you’re frightened. And Deacon Price does want to speak to you.”

I wait for the but . Because I know, with a sick, sinking dread, that it’s coming.

“But I still expect you to perform your duties,” he says, eyes hard. “Now more than ever. You can not imagine the stress I’m under.”

Two of your congregants are dead! I want to scream at him. And I found both of their bodies!

And yet I did the same thing he’s proposing, didn’t I? I went to Ambrose.

No, that was different. I wanted prayer . And he offered something?—

He offered something better.

I think about it now, staring up at Reverend Gunner. My body goes hot.

“Do you understand?” Reverend Gunner asks. “I’ll need to see you soon. Tonight, after the woman’s prayer session? ”

There’s only one answer to that question. It doesn’t matter if my heart is broken, if I’m grieving, if the entire campus is burning down around us. But this time, when I answer it, I have a secret of my own.

“I’ll be there,” I say, voice ringing out clearly.

But my thoughts are focused on Ambrose’s dark, hot eyes.