Beguiled (12 page)

All I could think was that I wanted to make love to her. I wanted to do the same for her after she assuaged this yearning between my legs. Even more stunning was the realization that I loved her. I loved Alice.

The thought of kissing her again, of tasting her roused a passion in me that shook me to the core. Did this desire make me wicked? Immoral? At this point, I didn’t care.

I held her head and spread my legs wider. I was so close. So, so close.

“Oh yes,” I mewled as her finger plumbed my depths with persistent purpose. Faster and faster. I lifted my knees, delighting in the push-pull of her finger and the insistent drag her of mouth on my clitoris. I squeezed her head between my thighs and rolled my hips. The sound of wet suction and heavy breathing filled my senses. Alice. My lover. My love.

On the verge, I trembled. My body gushed, aching for release, for ecstasy while Alice drove me relentlessly toward paradise. Eagerly, I slipped into the heated feel of her mouth on me coupled with her finger inside me, and then I spiraled. My cunny convulsed and throbbed, and I gasped. My back arched off the ground. Wave after incessant wave crashed over me as pleasure unfurled from that one spot in my body. My scalp tingled with it. So did my fingers and toes, and Alice didn’t stop until my legs fell limp.

Sated and heavy, I opened my eyes and gazed at her, silhouetted by sun as she undid her breeches. She kicked them off, and before I could move, she straddled me and sank down on my face.

Clutching her shirt up to her breasts, she lowered herself until her damp heat pressed into my mouth. “Eat me,” she gasped, rocking roughly against my face. “Eat my cunny.”

Instinct took over, and I wound my arms around her hips and licked and sucked at her nether lips and her clitoris. This was what I’d wanted, what I’d dreamed of in the dark. Her knees spread, and she pressed more heavily against me. My senses flooded with the feminine scent of her, the sweet and slippery taste of her cream. I pulled her impossibly closer. Her thighs shook. She fell forward on her elbows. Long, low moans escaped her chest, and she began to grind herself against my mouth.

Something clicked within my soul. Something life altering and astonishing. All at once, I knew—I knew—I could love another woman for the rest of my life. I could love Alice.

Giving her pleasure, kissing her, was not merely me seeking physical comfort and pleasure. It was far more than that.

I twisted her onto her back, rolling with her. My finger found her opening and slid inside. My other hand drifted up her flat belly until I cupped her breast, and then I rolled her taut nipple between my fingers and thumb. Her hands roamed down my arm, over my head, and all the while, she encouraged me.

“Yes, Belle, yes.” She breathed the words. “Fuck me with your finger. Eat my cunny.”

I latched on to her swollen clitoris and flicked my tongue against it while sucking it at the same time. Her fingers tightened in my hair. Her body tensed. Her bottom lifted off the ground, and suddenly her channel gripped my finger in rhythmic spasms. She’d found release.

When she grew still, I kissed my way up her body, stopping to lave the flat plane of her stomach, her peachy navel, and higher to where I teased each of her taut nipples into my mouth. After I’d had my fill of her petal-soft breasts, I lifted my head and gazed into her eyes.

“I love you, Alice,” I confessed as I brushed my thumb across her full bottom lip.

She pulled me down to her, and I tasted the softness of her mouth the same way I’d relished her sweet sex.

Chapter Six

It was as if a burden had been lifted from my shoulders. During those early fall weeks I accepted my odd relationship with Alice. Ma would never have noticed anyway, and if Uncle Hewlett knew, he didn’t let on.

Alice and I fell into a comfortable routine of tending the herd at dawn and dusk and making the rounds to trade our milk and cheese for goods we needed from our neighbors.

Wearing male attire and short hair, my strange Yankee boarder was the gossip of the area, but I didn’t heed the voices in my head that told me to be careful. I’d fallen completely in love with her. It surprised me how easily it had happened. When we spent time alone, we held hands, we talked, or we worked in silence side by side. I enjoyed her easy company in a way I’d never enjoyed Dalton’s.

At night, Alice and I undressed and bathed each other and then made love in my bed.

I tried not to think past the war. I wanted her to stay here with me forever. I didn’t want life to intrude on my narrow world at Rattle and Snap where circumstances shielded us from society’s watchful, judgmental eye.

I relished those nights, naked and sated in her arms. I loved the way her soft kisses starkly contrasted her almost carnal, sexual dominance of me.

That night, after she’d bathed me, my heart began to pound when she said, “Get on the bed, Belle. Get on your knees.”

I stared. I knew Alice suffered her monthly. What could we do?

“Do it!” She smacked my bottom. I gasped, shocked at first, but then the sting melted into delicious warmth.

“What are you going to do?” I asked and giggled as she chased me to the bed.

She, however, did not laugh. Instead, she swatted my backside again.

Naked, I climbed onto the bed. I trembled as I got on my knees. She crawled behind me, and I moaned when her fingers delved through my nether lips.

“I’m going to fuck you like a man,” she said.

That’s when I felt something hard prodding my opening. Startled, I fell sideways and looked back, shocked to discover Alice holding one of my thick beeswax candles in her hand.

She grinned wickedly. “Get back on your knees.”

“No!” I couldn’t dare submit to being violated with…with a candle. An inanimate object!

She pressed my thighs apart and wedged in between them, preventing me from closing my legs—allowing her to do exactly what she wanted to me. With a victorious chuckle, she moved over me, and once again, I felt the bottom of the candle slide through my nether lips and then prod my entrance.

“Alice!” I wrenched away, but she caught me and moved over me the way a man would mount a woman.

I gaped as an inch, two, three slid slowly inside me. My sheath stretched to accommodate the thickness. She seemed to know exactly how much length I could take. My lashes fluttered, and I struggled to keep from succumbing to the insidious pleasure.

“Stop your flailing, or I’ll flip you back over and shove my cock up your ass,” Alice threatened.

I didn’t doubt she meant it. The smooth hardness felt sinfully wonderful, but some prudery in me prevented me from allowing myself to enjoy it—until Alice threaded one hand under my neck and covered my mouth with hers. She thrust the candle in me as if it were indeed her cock, and I reveled in it, spreading and rocking in time with her as her fist pushed against my loins again and again. My hands roamed down her back and over her taut buttocks, and I imagined the hardness filling me did belong to her.

The muscles in her arm bulged as she worked the candle in and out. She suddenly sat back on her knees, and while she continued to plunge into me with one hand, she rubbed my eager pearl with the fingers of her other hand.

I submitted to the sensations, to Alice’s brute intent to give me pleasure. My body warmed and liquefied. My bud felt full and ready to burst, and then ecstasy claimed me with such force that it seemed as if my breath was stolen from my lungs. I arched off the bed. Alice moved with me.

“Keep letting it come, Belle,” she said huskily.

Still wrapped in bliss, I was vaguely aware of the candle slipping out. “Keep on, darling, keep on…”

A cry left my throat as Alice’s mouth clamped down on my distended clitoris. Her fingers filled me, pushing downward, still thrusting so hard her fist pummeled my body. I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t stand the torturous pleasure. I wanted to drive her away, and at the same time, I wanted this to never end.

I felt an overwhelming urge, a fullness and then a curious and different quickening as wet, warm liquid gushed all over me, all over Alice’s hand, all over the bed.

My first thought was that I’d pissed myself. Despite the pleasure still racking my body, I tried to push back, to sit, but my limbs were too heavy, and Alice still had her face buried in the dampness between my legs.

“Stop, stop,” I moaned.

She lifted her head, her face glistening wet.

I was mortified. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” she asked and smiled as her tongue traced the corners of her lips. “Mmm.”

“I…I…pissed the bed.” My face flamed.

Alice laughed. “No you didn’t, darling.” Her fingers continued to plunder me slowly. “I made you gush. It’s not piss. See?”

She withdrew her fingers and held them under my nose. I expected the acrid bite of urine. Instead, the fragrance smelled honey sweet.

“See?” Alice asked again. Her fingers returned to my tingling clitoris where she slowly caressed me as she kissed her way up my body. “I’m going to do that to you every time.” Her lips nipped at my breasts and then higher where she sucked at the hollow on the side of my neck.

She lifted her head and looked into my eyes. Her hand stopped moving. “This feels right with you, Belle. I know what people say and what they think about me, but you…you accepted me—all of me, just as I am.”

“Did I?”

She nodded. “No one has ever just allowed me to just be me. No one but you.”

I stared.

She continued. “I have to be honest. It scares the hell out of me.”

“Why?”

“Because…because I love you so much…and I know that when this war is over, things will change,” she whispered. Tears rimmed her eyes. She sniffed.

I caressed her cheek, loving the smooth, warm softness against my palm. “Why does anything have to change?”

The hand between my legs moved to my waist. “I’m afraid that when the men come back, that you’ll…you’ll get tired of me, that you’ll want to remarry.”

I hadn’t thought of that. I hadn’t thought of anything but her or past anything than here and now. But I did know I couldn’t imagine my future without her in it. “Alice, I don’t want to remarry. I want to be with
you
. Always.”

Her eyes searched mine for a moment as if she was trying to discern my veracity, and then her mouth claimed my mouth, hard and hungry. Our teeth clashed. Our tongues mated, and I tasted the sweetness of my own cream. My heart soared.

Trembling, I realized Alice was the safe haven I’d sought all my life.

I covered her hand with mine and pushed it back down, between my breasts, over my belly, farther. Her fingers burrowed into my thatch, but instead of delving into my cunny, she wet her fingertips and explored lower.

Startled, I jolted. “What are you doing?” No one had ever touched me
there
in a sexual manner.

“Shh,” she whispered. “Spread your legs. I want to show you all the pleasure your body has to offer.”

“But—”

“Get on your knees again,” she ordered.

My pulse quickened. And when I didn’t immediately comply, she lifted my knee with one hand and landed a firm swat to the side of my ass cheek.

I squirmed with renewed desire, but I rolled over and pushed up on my knees, leaving my head down on my pillows. My channel clenched around its own emptiness.

Alice knelt, settling in behind me.

“Don’t hurt me,” I murmured.

Another sharp smack landed on my bottom. I groaned at the curious mixture of pleasure and pain.

She coated her fingers liberally with the excess wetness between my legs, and then she slowly circled my rosette with her fingertip. That part of me came alive, wanting—needing—her inside. I actually found myself rocking into her hand, pushing back. Until—

Her finger breached the rim, and white-hot pain seared my most private opening. “Alice,” I whimpered.

“Relax.”

“Alice, I can’t—”

She popped my backside with her free hand and thrust her finger all the way inside my anus. My rim released slightly, and the pain subsided as I adjusted to the fullness entrenched within me.

“I knew you’d like that,” she whispered, moving her finger in and out of my nether hole the way she did in my cunny.

I braced my knees and opened them as far as I could. It did feel good. Really good. And extremely taboo. I couldn’t believe I agreed to allow this.

The candle prodded my cunny again, and I sucked in a breath when she pushed it inside me. Candle in, finger out. Finger in, candle out. Over and over, she worked me in a rhythm. I felt whole. Complete.

Harder and faster.

I was lost to the overwhelming sensations. To her.

And when I quickened, the walls of my sheath clamped down so hard, they pushed the candle out. My anus clamped down around Alice’s finger. She dropped the candle and wrested more pleasure from me by rubbing my clit. I withstood it as long as I could, and then I wilted on the drenched mattress.

Jolts of ecstasy shot through my body over and over. All the while, Alice peppered every inch of me with kisses, telling me between each brush of her lips how much she loved me.

* * *

I awakened to the sound of riders—several riders—thundering up the drive.

From the window, I watched as dozens—no, hundreds—of Yankees rode and marched up the drive through the early dawn fog.
Not again.

Alice raised her head and blinked sleepily. “What is it?”

“Yankees.”

Before I could don my dressing gown, one pounded on the front door. Fear struck that they were here to burn the place. With a prayer they wouldn’t find the goat herd, I raced down the stairs and yelled through the barricaded door. “What do you want?” I demanded, still buttoning my robe.

“Open up, ma’am.”

“No.”

“Open the door, or we’ll burn the house down around you,” he called back.

Through the windows flanking the door, I saw several Yankees already bearing torches. The tall Yankee on the porch waved his arms at his men and issued orders to surround the house. Fury raged as I pulled off the heavy board we’d put in place to keep the bushwhackers out. I yanked open the door and blocked the threshold with my body. “I’ve already made an agreement with the officer who came before you.”