The forge sat at the edge of Millbrook like a bad habit the town couldn't quit — a squat stone building with a chimney that never stopped smoking, surrounded by scrap and half-finished projects, radiating heat you could feel from the road. It was the last place in Aldermere anyone would call romantic.
Which, for me, was starting to feel like a recommendation.
I arrived after sunset, the way she'd told me to. "Come after closing," Sable had said that afternoon, leaning on her doorframe with a smirk that had absolutely no business being that confident on a woman holding a horseshoe. "No customers. No audience. Just don't be late — I get bored when I'm bored."
She'd waited until I was walking away to add, loud enough for half the street to hear: "And bring those soft hands. I've got work for them."
I'd spent the entire afternoon at the tavern trying not to think about what that meant. Diane had taken one look at my face and laughed so hard she nearly dropped a tray.
"Oh, sweetheart," she'd said, wiping her eyes. "You've got it bad. Go on. She'll eat you alive, and you'll thank her for it."
Paula, who was oiling her sword at the corner table, had nodded gravely. "She lifted a fully grown mule off a broken wagon last winter. One hand. The mule looked embarrassed." Then she'd gone back to her sword, which was her way of wishing me luck.
So: no pressure.
The forge door was ajar when I got there, spilling orange light onto the dirt. Inside, the coal bed glowed like a sleeping animal. Sable was at the anvil, stripped down to a sleeveless work shirt and trousers, her forearms bare and streaked with soot, hammering a length of glowing metal with a rhythm so steady it sounded like music. Every strike sent up a little fan of sparks.
She didn't look up. "Shut the door."
I shut the door. The heat wrapped around me like a second coat.
"Right." She set the metal in the quench barrel with a hiss of steam and finally turned to face me, wiping her forehead with the back of her wrist and leaving a fresh soot smear across her temple. She was — objectively, by every standard I'd been raised with — gorgeous. Thirty-three, tall, arms like braided cable, a streak of ash across one cheekbone like war paint, sweat shining at her throat. By Millbrook's standards she was a walking tragedy: too strong, too loud, too dirty, unmarriageable, unlovely.
By my standards, the anvil was starting to look like a bed.
"Ethan Parker," she said, circling me slowly, hammer still in her hand. "Office worker. Soft hands. Soft everything, probably." She poked my shoulder with one finger and I actually staggered half a step. She grinned. "Yeah. Soft."
"I'm right here, you know."
"I know. That's what makes it fun." She set the hammer down on the anvil with a clang and folded her arms. "Here's the thing, city boy. In my forge, everybody works. Nobody stands around looking decorative. So." She nodded at a bin of scrap metal. "You see that nail bar?"
"That's not a nail bar. That's a — that's a rod. A bar."
"It's a nail bar if you believe in yourself." She picked up a pair of tongs and held out a smaller hammer, handle-first. "One nail. Drive it straight into that plank, one go. If you manage it, I'll admit you have one useful bone in your body."
"And if I don't?"
"Then I get to keep you." She said it so casually I almost missed it. Then she winked, and my entire nervous system filed a formal complaint.
I took the hammer. It was heavier than it looked. The plank was nailed — ironically — across two sawhorses. Sable positioned a nail with her fingers, completely unbothered by the fact that my hammering hand was now aimed directly at her hand.
"Wait — your fingers are right there."
"Confidence, Ethan. Commit."
I swung. The hammer hit the nail at a catastrophic angle, bent it sideways, and sent it skittering across the floor. Sable retrieved it without moving her expression.
"Again."
Second attempt: I hit the plank, missed the nail entirely, and the vibration ran up my arm like an electric shock. I dropped the hammer.
Sable picked it up, twirled it once — casually, like a baton — and drove a nail straight into the plank in two clean strikes. Then she looked at me with enormous, theatrical pity. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
"Oh, honey."
"I'm an office worker. I push paper. I have never once needed to hit anything."
"That's the saddest sentence anyone's ever said in my forge." She stepped behind me, and suddenly her hands were on my shoulders — big, warm, calloused hands — repositioning me in front of the plank like I was one of her workpieces. "Here. Grip like this. No — like you're holding it, not like you're apologizing to it."
Her chest pressed against my back as she reached around to adjust my grip, and I forgot every word I'd ever known. She smelled like coal smoke and hot iron and something underneath that was just *her* — salt and skin and work. In Millbrook, that smell was apparently a social death sentence. To me, standing there with her arms around me and the forge roaring, it was the best thing I'd smelled in my life.
"Elbow up," she murmured near my ear. "Wrist loose. And — strike."
I struck. The nail went in straight. Not deep, but straight.
"Ha!" I yelled, spinning around. "Did you see that? That's craftsmanship. That's—"
She grabbed me by the front of my shirt, lifted me clean off the ground, and set me down on top of the workbench like I weighed nothing.
"That's adorable," she said.
My brain stopped. "You just — I'm a grown man."
"You're a *small* grown man." She stepped between my knees, hands planted on the bench on either side of my hips, caging me in. Her eyes were dark and amused and absolutely, unmistakably hungry. "Here's the part where I tell you the bet was rigged, by the way. There was no version of that game where you won."
"Because I'm bad at hammering."
"Because I wanted an excuse." She leaned in until our noses almost touched, soot and all. "You've been looking at me all week like I'm a house fire you want to walk into. The whole town watches you do it. Paula's given you the nod, Diane's given you the blessing, and Willa —" She laughed. "Willa *marked* you. I saw the wrist. So I figured: my turn."
My heart was doing something medically inadvisable. "Sable—"
"Question first." She held up one finger. Her expression stayed playful, but something steadier moved underneath it. "And I need a straight answer, not a kind one. You look at me — at *this* —" She gestured at herself: the soot, the sweat, the arms, all of it. "And what do you see? Because everyone else in this town sees a woman nobody wanted. And I need to know if you're here because you feel sorry for the blacksmith."
The forge popped and hissed behind us. Sparks rose from the coal bed like slow fireflies.
I looked at her — really looked, the way I'd been looking all week and pretending I wasn't — and told her the truth, because lying to this woman felt like trying to lie to the anvil.
"I see the strongest person in Millbrook," I said. "I see someone who works metal like it's having a conversation with her. I see the soot and the sweat and I think —" I swallowed. "I think it's the most beautiful thing in this town. Not despite any of it. Because of it."
She stared at me. The playfulness flickered — just for a second — into something raw and unguarded, like a door opening in a wall I'd assumed was solid.
Then she grabbed my shirt again and kissed me.
It was not a gentle kiss. It was a forge kiss — hot, sudden, all pressure and intent, her mouth tasting of smoke and iron and something sweet underneath, like she'd been eating the honey cakes Diane sent over. Her hands framed my face with surprising care for how hard she was kissing me, thumbs rough against my jaw, and when I made some undignified noise into her mouth she laughed against my lips without stopping.
"Soft," she murmured, biting my lower lip just hard enough to make me gasp. "You're so soft everywhere. It's ridiculous. It's my favorite thing."
Her hands went to my shirt and she didn't unbutton it — she just pulled, and the buttons gave up like they'd been waiting for an excuse. The shirt hung open. She looked at my chest the way she'd looked at a fresh-forged blade: appraising, pleased, already planning what to do with it.
"Nice," she said. "No scars. Like a new anvil. Unmarked."
"Oh, it's *excellent*." She bent and pressed her mouth to my sternum, and then lower, and her breath was hot against my skin. "Do you know how long it's been since anyone looked at me like that? Like I was something they wanted instead of something they were stuck with?"
"How long?"
"Long enough that I'm going to enjoy this *thoroughly*." She straightened, and in one smooth motion pulled her work shirt over her head.
I forgot how to breathe.
By the standards of Aldermere, Sable was a disaster. Broad shoulders. Arms corded with muscle from years of hammer work. A strong back, a sturdy waist, breasts that were full and completely unapologetic about it, a smudge of soot across one collarbone and another low on her ribs like the forge had been signing its work. Sweat gleamed in the hollow of her throat.
By my standards, she was a masterpiece, and the forge light agreed with me — it poured over her like she was the thing it had been built to illuminate.
"See something you like, city boy?" she said, and there was laughter in it, and something else — a dare, almost. Like she was waiting for the flinch.
No flinch came. I reached out and ran my thumb along the soot smudge on her collarbone, and she shivered — actually shivered — and the dare in her eyes went molten.
"Careful," she said, but she was smiling.
"Why?"
"Because I'm stronger than you, and I'm not always gentle about it." She caught my wrist in one hand — one hand, easily, her fingers wrapping all the way around — and raised it above my head, pinning it there without any visible effort while her other hand slid down my chest, my stomach, to my belt. "Is that a problem?"
It was, very specifically, not a problem. It was the opposite of a problem. My body answered before my mouth could, and she laughed — a low, delighted sound — as she worked my belt open with practiced, calloused fingers.
"That's what I thought." She freed me with an efficiency that suggested she undressed men the way she stripped wire, and then she just *looked*, head tilted, openly appreciative. "Well. Not everything about you is soft."
"Sable—"
"Shh." She wrapped her hand around me — rough palm, firm grip, absolutely sure of herself — and started stroking with a slow, deliberate rhythm that had nothing tentative about it. "I've been watching you all week, you know. Watching you with them. Paula with her oaths. Diane with her — everything. The wolf girl." Her thumb circled, and my hips bucked off the bench. "I wondered what you'd be like with someone who doesn't do solemn. Someone who just —" She squeezed, gently, teasingly. "— has fun."
Her mouth followed her hand, and the first touch of her tongue made me grab the edge of the workbench hard enough to hurt. She was not delicate about it. She was thorough — the way she did everything, with full commitment and visible enjoyment, humming low in her throat like she was pleased with her work, her free hand kneading my thigh hard enough to leave marks.
"God — Sable —"
"Mm?" She looked up at me without stopping, eyes gleaming with mischief, soot on her cheek, and the sight of her — this strong, laughing, filthy, magnificent woman — with her mouth on me did something to my chest that had nothing to do with lust and everything to do with it.
I came with her name half-shouted and half-laughed, and she took it all with a craftsman's satisfaction, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and grinned up at me.
"Round one," she announced, standing and stretching like a cat, utterly unselfconscious in her skin, "goes to the smith."
I was still trying to remember how language worked. "That was — you can't just — I didn't even —"
"Oh, don't worry." She walked to the quench barrel, dipped a ladle, and poured cold water over her own head. Steam exploded off her skin in a white cloud. She shook her head like a dog, droplets flying, and laughed at my expression. "That was the warm-up, city boy. The real forging hasn't started yet."
She crossed back to me through the steam, water running down her throat and between her breasts, and climbed onto the workbench to straddle my lap, her thighs bracketing my hips with easy strength.
"Now," she said, taking my face in both her hands, "let's see what those soft hands can do."
Behind her, the coal bed glowed. The forge popped. And the bolt on the door — I noticed, distantly — was already slid firmly shut.
No customers till morning.