Her Beguiling Bride by Paisley Smith

sensitized tissue. Belle struggled to prolong her pleasure, but any moment she would no longer be able to contain it. She would explode. Alice’s shoulder dipped, and the finger slid in deeper, the tip caressing the little pad of flesh within that drove Belle wild.
    A second finger teased the sensitive aperture below, threatening entry. Still holding Alice’s gaze, Belle lifted her bottom, inviting the finger inside.
    A little smile played on Alice’s lips as she nudged her fingertip against the opening and then slid it as far in as she could reach.
    Belle clung to her lover’s shoulders as she spread wide to receive as much as she could. The two fingers in two separate passages filled her with a sense of total sexual completeness. The finger in her ass wriggled as the one in her cunny stroked, and Belle lost her battle to draw out the pleasure. She expelled a breath as a rushing wave of bliss crashed over her and carried her to the heavens. Her lashes fluttered shut, and brilliant stars flashed behind her eyelids. Alice’s body countering Belle’s was the only thing, it seemed, that anchored her to the earth.
    When the last vestige of ecstasy eddied away, Belle blinked her eyes open. She cupped Alice’s cheek. “We’re married.”
    “Yes, we are.” Alice kissed her again. This kiss, however, was no soft, sweet peck on the lips. This kiss was a claiming that spoke to Belle soul-deep. It reached that place where she knew this relationship, although taboo in the eyes of society, was right and good and whole.
    Peace descended on her, but her sense of serenity was short-lived.
    Alice ended their kiss and moved down Belle’s body. “You’d better hold on to that headboard again,” Alice said with a promising smirk.
    Once more, Belle curled her fingers around the wooden spindles at the head of the bed.

Epilogue
    Alice straightened and wiped her perspiration-drenched brow with the back of her sleeve. Cotton blanketed the rolling fields for as far as she could see. Farther up the way, Chester and a band of field hands who’d returned to Rattle and Snap after the war sang as they filled their sacks with cotton.
    And on the other side of the field, Tommy picked cotton from his wheeled chair while other neighbors worked the patch for a share of the profits.
    A sense of pride swelled in Alice’s breast when she remembered how she and Belle had gone to visit Tommy and had insisted that his participation was invaluable to them. He’d said he wouldn’t leave his room, but the very next day, Granny had driven her wagon to Rattle and Snap with Tommy seated on the buckboard.
    They’d had the best crop since Alice had lived on the plantation. Marrying Belle had indeed solved all their problems. As it turned out, Phineas Ryan, the man whose life Alice had saved near Decatur, had ties with the officer in charge of tariffs on Rattle and Snap. When Alice asked him for a favor, he’d willingly obliged “Mr. and Mrs. O’Malley.”
    “Alice!” Belle called, and Alice turned to find her wife wading toward her through the cotton stalks.
    Alice waved and let her cotton sack slide to the ground. The early fall breeze played in Belle’s calico skirt and in the ribbons of her white bonnet. She brushed an errant strand of dark hair behind her ear. They’d married that blustery St. Patrick’s Day in Savannah, and Alice would never regret it.
    The bond between them had only strengthened that day.
    A smile deepened the two dimples in Belle’s cheeks. “I brought you some water. You looked terribly thirsty.” She brandished a tin canteen as she neared.
    “Thank you,” Alice told her, taking the canteen and removing the cork before turning it up and guzzling nearly half the contents. She hadn’t realized just how thirsty she was.
    Belle took a quick look back at Chester and his crew and then cast a sly glance Alice’s way. “Do you want to go with me to milk the goats?”
    A grin played Alice’s lips. “Right