Beguiled Read online

  “Brace your legs.” She patted my thigh.

  I widened my stance. My pulse accelerated. My brother had regaled us with stories about how guns “kicked like a mule,” and although I’d never been kicked by one of the beasts, I could imagine the brute force one of the rugged hooves could inflict upon an intended target.

  “That’s it,” Alice whispered. Her fingers trailed up my arms to the elbows where she barely lifted my arms higher. Her body countered mine. “Now squeeze back the trigger,” she told me.

  I swallowed and pulled on the trigger. Drawing that little slice of metal was lots harder than I thought it’d be. Gritting my teeth, I wrapped both index fingers around the trigger and squeezed.

  Pow!

  My arms flew upward. My body slammed into hers. I shrieked.

  Alice laughed. She laughed hard.

  Ears still ringing from the blast, I whirled on her. Anger flared, but the sight of her grinning from ear to ear and holding her hands over her abdomen while she staggered and laughed melted my hot temper.

  “You shot…you shot—” she attempted but ended up only pointing at the scarecrow because she couldn’t stop guffawing. Finally she dragged in a deep breath. “You shot him in the…in the damned crotch!”

  I looked.

  Sure enough. A gaping hole split the vee of the scarecrow’s breeches. Succumbing to a fit of laughter, I dropped to my knees on the ground and laid the pistol in the grass. Humor felt good and…strange. How long had it been since I’d had a good laugh? My sides hurt, and my face ached from smiling.

  Alice rolled into the grass beside me. “That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen,” she chortled.

  “It’s not to me.” I tried to feign seriousness. “I meant to shoot him in the head.”

  “I think perhaps you succeeded,” she said and winked. “It was just a head of a different kind.”

  My gaze linked with hers, and her smile faded. My heart turned over hard. I bit my bottom lip and cupped her cheek in my hand. All at once, awareness rippled over and through me. I breathed in the scent of the late summer grass, of the damp earth, and the bitter reek of gunpowder. The sun’s warmth permeated my black day dress until a bead of perspiration rolled down between my shoulder blades. Alice’s velvet skin grew hot in my palm.

  I shut my eyes as a single tear seeped through my lashes and coursed down my cheek.

  “What’s wrong, Belle?” She scooted closer and took my hand in hers, lacing her fingers with mine.

  I blinked. “I don’t want to pretend anymore.”

  “Pretend?”

  Fighting back tears, I took a deep gulp of air and blew it out. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t admit it. If I did, it would make all this real, and up until now, I hadn’t wanted to face it.

  “Pretend what, Belle?”

  I shook. Alice put her arm around me. “Talk to me,” she urged. “What’s the matter? Have I done something to upset you?”

  “No,” I confessed. “It’s not you.”

  “Then what?” Her blue eyes darkened to the gray of a storm cloud.

  “Dalton’s not coming home.” I said the words I’d been unable to admit since I’d seen his name listed as missing on the casualty report from the battle at Cold Harbor.

  Her forehead furrowed. “What do you mean?”

  “Dalton’s not coming home.” Saying the words again cemented them in my soul. “He was listed as missing in Virginia. And today, Tommy told me he’d been there when…when Dalton was killed.”

  Alice didn’t say anything. Instead, she cradled my head to her bosom and held me while I finally allowed myself to grieve. It was suddenly real in an awful, sickening way. I’d thought when he died, the body would be returned. I’d see something firm, something solid to let me know that he’d really been killed. Instead, I’d discovered his name on a list of the missing and then had heard the account secondhand from a neighbor.

  Dalton Holloway, Cobb’s Legion. I wanted to believe it had been a mistake. He was surely wounded or missing in action. He’d been taken prisoner. Anything. I just hadn’t wanted to accept that he was dead and I’d never see him again.

  I couldn’t even remember the last words I’d said to him. I could barely remember what he looked like or remember what it had been like to see him on a daily basis. That part of my life seemed so far away now, as if someone else had lived in my body during that time.

  “Does Uncle Hewlett know?” Alice asked after I finally stopped crying.

  “Not yet.” I wiped my eyes on my sleeve. “First Dalton, then Pa.” I shook my head. “I can’t bear another death, Alice. I can’t stand another loss in my life.”

  She listened.

  I continued. “It’s not just the loss of my loved ones. My home. The cotton. The servants. God, Alice, I don’t know who I am anymore.”

  Alice brushed one of my tears away with her thumb. “I’m not sorry, Belle.”

  Shocked, I stared.

  “I can’t pretend to be,” she confessed. “I don’t want to see you upset. Not at all. But I can’t pretend that I don’t want more from you.”

  I shook. “What are you saying?”

  Tears rimmed her eyes. “I don’t know.” She shook her head. “I don’t know, Belle.”

  Her sincerity touched me. I knew what she’d left unsaid. I sighed.

  She reclined on her elbows and made a stab at steering the conversation off course. “I don’t suppose I’ve made figuring this shit out easier for you.”

  At that, I let out a wry chuckle. “Well, no. Because now…”

  Blinking back another barrage of tears, I tilted my head back and looked at the turquoise sky. “I don’t know what I feel,” I said honestly. “The only real thing in my life right now is…you.”

  “Me?” She poked herself in the chest for emphasis.

  I nodded. “All I know is that when I touch you, I don’t ever want to stop. I don’t understand this.”

  My gaze found hers again. “I don’t understand these feelings I have for you. At first, I thought I was merely seeking comfort and…and release. But now…”

  “Now what?” She sat once more and leaned slightly toward me. “Now what, Belle?”

  “I-I…don’t know.” My pulse pounded.

  Her eyes dropped to my lips, and I shifted toward her, wanting, needing her to kiss me. My heart fluttered like a wild bird in my chest. My stomach tensed. Please kiss me. Just once. But I couldn’t summon the courage to utter the request aloud.

  “I want you the way I wanted Dalton,” I said, instantly regretting confessing such a thing.

  For a moment, her face tightened as if she was in pain. An odd grief glimmered in her eyes. Just as I started to voice an apology, her fingers seized my wrist. Stunned, I glanced down at her hand and then I lifted my gaze to hers again.

  “I love you, Belle,” she blurted.

  Even though I’d secretly longed to hear those very words, I gaped. I suddenly felt as if I’d been sucked inside myself and I was looking out through a long, long tunnel.

  “I’m in love with you,” she reiterated.

  Somehow, I’d realized this. I’d known it all along, but like Dalton’s death, I’d refused to believe it. And yet I couldn’t accept it. The idea of her being in love with me terrified me. “How…how can you be in love with me?” I asked, wanting desperately to understand my own roiling emotions. “We’re both women.”

  “I don’t know.” Her hand tightened around my arm. She curled her knees underneath her. “I don’t know. I just know it’s true. I know that you’re beautiful and caring and that this morning, I would have killed that man with my bare hands to keep him from hurting you.”

  “But—” I began, but her mouth on mine prevented me from saying anything else. My heart reeled as her kiss seemed to draw me out of myself and into her. Insistent fingers threaded into my chignon. At that moment, I knew I belonged completely to her. The realization shook me to the core. All at once, feelings of fear and lov
e and excitement and wonder flooded me until I couldn’t sort the emotions apart. Her lips plied mine until I opened for her and all coherent thought fled. Yielding, I returned her soft kiss, admitting her tongue as she teased through the opening I left for her.

  She moaned into my mouth, and then cupping my face in her palms, she deepened the kiss. Something changed. My world altered. A cord fused between my mouth and my sex, and I wanted her. Beyond caring about anything or anyone else in the world, I wanted her.

  I gripped her shoulders and dragged her down as I reclined in the grass. With furious intent, I ruched up my skirts while she continued to plunder my mouth. I caught her hand in mine and pushed it down. Her fingers fought through the layers of fabric, and then…

  “Oh, Alice!” I cried as her finger slid through my folds and then inside me. My body shuddered around her touch, but I wanted more. I wanted her mouth on me there. “Taste me. Please. Taste me,” I begged as I pushed her head down.

  A second later, her warm tongue teased and tormented me while her finger explored my channel. I’d never felt anything so wonderful, so all-consuming. Her lips ravaged me, plucking at my clitoris and urging me to rock against her mouth. Her finger slid through my slippery crevice, prodding me, only to withdraw and stab into me again. I spiraled inward, inundated with sensation after sensation.

  Nothing in my well-ordered life had prepared me for this moment. Not one damn thing. But something inside me yearned to reach out and grab happiness with both hands, the consequences be damned.

  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 y
our 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.”