Page 8

CHAPTER SEVEN

MERCY

I sink into the cheap, flimsy sofa, my entire body trembling. Ambrose ambles toward me with a slow, lazy swagger, and I peer up at him, my tongue dry and thick in my mouth.

“What do you want?” I manage to whisper.

Ambrose stops a few feet from me, his eyes pinned to mine. “The Church of the Well organizes adoptions.”

Of all the things he could have said in this moment, this sentence is the absolute last thing I expected.

“What?” I squawk out. I can’t help myself.

“Adoptions,” he repeats. “I’m helping someone find her birth parents. She was adopted through the Church of the Well in the ‘90s.”

I stare at him in confusion. “So she’s a member of the church?” That’s what the church does—rescue lost souls to bring them into the fold. It’s how I came here, although I don’t say that to Ambrose.

“She was,” he says. “Although now she’s—she’s part of my flock. And I agreed to help her.”

I knot my skirt up in my fists as warring emotions clash in my chest. One of them is a strange desire to know more about this woman he’s helping. If she’s a wife. A girlfriend.

Why do you care?

“So that’s why you brought me here,” I say numbly. “To blackmail me.” I look at him—dangerous and handsome, his lean, rangy frame towering over me. For a moment, I’m reminded of him praying over me this morning. All that warmth I felt was the opposite of the emptiness I feel right now.

I thought he was different. I thought he was like Raul.

“I want to blackmail Reverend Gunner,” he says, somewhat stiffly. “If anyone on this compound has access to those files, it’s him. But you’ll need to deliver the message. Tell him if he doesn’t help, I’ll go straight to every news outlet and?—”

“He won’t care.”

Ambrose stops and frowns at me. I stare down at my lap. “He doesn’t care what the secular world thinks of him.”

“I’m not talking about the secular world,” Ambrose says sharply. “I’m talking about his followers. He was a powerful man in the old televangelist days.”

I laugh. “He’s not a televangelist anymore. Not since God revealed the First Prophecy to him.” I narrow my eyes, regarding Ambrose with a new suspicion. “Do you know anything about the Church of the Well? Anything at all?”

Ambrose’s face is impossible to read. “I know enough,” he says darkly.

“Clearly, you don’t.” I straighten my shoulders and look him in the eye as I speak. “God Himself told Reverend Gunner that he was allowed to take a second wife because he’s a prophet, and his work is important enough that he needs extra support.”

Ambrose studies me for a second?—

And then he laughs.

“Is that what he said?” Ambrose sits on the couch beside me, leaving just enough space between us to count as decent. Not that Reverend Gunner will care if he finds out that I’m in this cabin unchaperoned. “What about him being willing to share ? Did God reveal that to him, too?”

I freeze, my skirt balled up tightly in my fists. “Yes,” I say, and Ambrose laughs again, shaking his head. “He wouldn’t actually share me with you,” I add. “I only said that so you wouldn’t?—”

“I won’t do anything to you that you haven’t agreed to.”

Ambrose’s words shoot straight through me, and I jerk my gaze up to him.

He’s not laughing.

“He only shared me with Pastor Sullivan,” I say, not totally sure why I’m telling him this. “He’s another prophet. My job here, in this life, is to serve as a helpmeet to the prophets. To help them—” The word curdles on my tongue. “Relax.”

Ambrose studies me for a long time. “I see,” he finally says. “And the congregation knows.”

“Of course they do. It’s a great honor.”

“Do you really believe that?”

I take a deep breath and look away from him, staring across the living room and into the open bathroom door. His cabin has the same layout as mine. Because that’s what being bestowed a great honor means—having the woman who raised you kick you out of her home because her husband wants to fuck you.

“Well?” Ambrose prompts.

I squeeze my eyes shut. I know I should say yes. But Ambrose would know I’m lying.

“No,” I whisper.

Ambrose shifts on the couch, and I glance over at him. He reminds me of Raul. They’re handsome in the same way, with their dark eyes and high cheekbones. But Ambrose looks at me in a way Raul never did.

Because Raul knew better.

“Forgive me for saying this.” Ambrose leans closer, his hair falling a little into his eyes. “But what I saw earlier—you didn’t seem to be enjoying yourself.”

Heat rushes to my cheeks. “You shouldn’t have seen that.”

“You’re right.” Ambrose straightens up. “I shouldn’t have watched. But—” His eyes are black holes. “I stand by what I said. Reverend Gunner doesn’t seem to care about your needs.”

I swallow, my throat suddenly very dry. “Reverend Gunner is the prophet,” I say, reciting what I’ve heard a thousand times. “I’m there to help him carry this burden.”

“But you don’t enjoy it.” Ambrose shifts closer, close enough that the space between us isn’t decent anymore

And yet I don’t move away.

“Of course I do.” I say it too quickly. Too defensively. A smile curves up on Ambrose’s lips.

“Like I said,” he murmurs. “My one weakness is the pleasures of the flesh.”

The couch’s armrest digs into the top part of my back, and Ambrose’s thigh nudges up to the seam of my legs. I bite back a gasp of surprise, but he notices. I can tell because his smile turns to that sharkish grin that splits his face in two.

I still don’t move away.

“What if I make you another offer?” he asks, looking me dead in the eye. “For the adoption records.”

He’s hunched over me, his mouth inches from mine. Three years as Reverend Gunner’s helpmeet means I know what this position is. I ought to push Ambrose away, get out of here, and run to tell Reverend Gunner that the itinerant preacher needs to be expelled from the church immediately.

And yet I don’t want to push him away. His thigh between my legs feels good, not odd and certainly not painful. Heat blooms in my belly.

“What kind of offer?” I whisper.

Ambrose tucks a lock of my hair behind my ear, his touch so gentle I can almost forget that this is a sin .

“You agree to help me get the files,” he says. “And I’ll reward you.”

“Reward me how?”

Ambrose grins again. Then, as gently as he tucked my hair, he starts to saw his thigh back and forth between my legs.

“How about I show you what it’s supposed to feel like?” he murmurs.

“I knew it!” I cry, and then I try to roll out from under him. But he catches me and pushes me back against the couch.

“I’m not going to fuck you,” he says. “I’m just going to touch you.”

He grinds his thigh up against me, and even with the layers of fabric between his skin and the most private part of my body, I’m struck dumb. It’s not that I can’t protest. It’s that I don’t want to.

“Like that,” he purrs, quickening his pace. “You like that, don’t you? Reverend Gunner never does this for you, does he?”

“Why would he?” I whisper.

“Because he doesn’t give a shit about you.”

I jerk my gaze up to meet Ambrose’s. He stares down at me like he’s daring me to contradict him. And all the while, he keeps sawing his leg up against my body.

“You don’t know that,” I finally say. Even though it’s a thought I’ve had myself, more than once, in the empty darkness of my bedroom.

“I know what I saw.” Ambrose snakes his arm down between us and grabs my dress’s skirt and peels it upward, removing one of the layers of fabric between us. He never breaks eye contact with me.

I won’t do anything to you that you haven’t agreed to.

I haven’t technically agreed to this. Not out loud.

But I do want it, don’t I? Because, God forgive me, I don’t want him to stop.

“What do you say, Mercy?” Ambrose pulls his knee away from me, and its absence makes me gasp. “I make you feel good, and then you help me get access to the files?”

“I don’t have access to the files,” I whimper.

“But you know where they are. So what’s it going to be? Yes or no?”

My breath shudders in my throat. I can’t say yes. I can’t .

No is on the tip of my tongue. But it never escapes?—

Because I nod my head in agreement instead.

Ambrose smiles at me, dazzling and toothy. “Wonderful,” he says, and I expect him to press his knee back against me—I want him to—but he doesn’t. Instead, he slides his hand back down and gently trails his fingers over my underwear. Not there , not where I expect him to touch. He’s a little higher, and he works his fingers in a slow, gentle circle.

I gasp, my body shuddering. It’s never felt like this, not with Reverend Gunner or Pastor Sullivan.

“That’s it,” Ambrose slips his fingers sideways and curls them into the leg band of my underwear. They feel impossibly hot against my skin. “Once you come, you can tell me where the files are.”

Before I can say anything, he pushes my panties aside, and then his fingers are on me on me, rippling over my most private area.

“But I can’t—” The words slip out before I can stop them. Ambrose looks down at me, his pupils flooding out his dark irises, turning his eyes solid black.

“Can’t what?” He doesn’t put his fingers inside me like I expect him to. Instead, he touches that spot that makes my whole lower half feel hot and shaky.

“Can’t come.” I sigh the words out, shame burning in my face.

Ambrose keeps rubbing me in slow, lazy circles. “Yes, you can.” He leans closer, and for a moment I think he’s going to kiss me. “It might take some time, but I can be patient when there’s something I want.”

“I’ve never?—”

“Stop talking.” He says it like an order. A command.

And one I want to follow.

So I do stop talking, sealing my mouth shut.

“Relax.”

That’s harder to do. Every muscle in my body feels like it’s contracting toward the place he’s touching.

“Good girl,” Ambrose says. “Now stop arguing with me and just focus on my fingers. Do you understand?”

Stop talking, he said, and so I nod wordlessly, gazing up at him. He smiles a little. His touch quickens.

“Then let’s begin.”