"Let's see what those soft hands can do."
Famous last words. Mine, apparently.
Sable settled onto my lap with the ease of someone sitting down to a meal she'd been looking forward to all day, and my hands — my allegedly soft hands — went to her waist on pure instinct. Her skin was hot from the forge and slick from the quench water, and under my palms I could feel the muscle moving as she shifted, strong as braided rope.
"Good," she said approvingly. "They're learning." She rolled her hips once, slow, and the friction of her — bare, wet, *right there* — against me made my vision go briefly white at the edges. "See? Fast learner."
"I'm very motivated."
"I can tell." She reached between us and guided me to her entrance, and then — with that same infuriating, wonderful confidence — sank down onto me in one smooth motion.
We both stopped breathing.
She was tight and hot and *strong* — I could feel her, feel the strength of her even there, in the way she held me — and she threw her head back with a groan that echoed off the stone walls like she'd been waiting years to make that sound. Her hands gripped my shoulders, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise, and I didn't care, I *welcomed* it, because this was Sable: nothing halfway, nothing gentle for gentleness's sake.
"Oh," she breathed, "oh, that's — that's *good* iron, city boy."
"Is that a compliment?"
"The highest." She started to move — slow rolls of her hips, grinding down, setting a rhythm like she was working the bellows: steady, deliberate, building heat. "You know what quenching is?"
"Enlighten me."
"You take the hot metal —" She rose up and slammed back down, and I nearly came off the bench. "— and you plunge it —" Again, harder. "— into cold water. The shock of it. That's what makes it *hard*." Her laugh was breathless now, fraying at the edges. "That's what makes it hold an edge."
"Sable—"
"Shh. I'm making a metaphor." She leaned forward, bracing her hands on the bench behind me, her breasts swaying with the motion, sweat and quench-water running down between them. "I'm the water, you're the —"
She didn't finish the metaphor. Neither of us was in any condition for metaphors.
She rode me like she did everything — with total commitment and a grin that never quite left her face, even as her breathing went ragged. Her thighs were iron around my hips. Every time I tried to take over, to set the pace, she pinned my wrists — one-handed, casual, like swatting a fly — and kept going.
"My forge," she gasped, laughing. "My rules."
"You're — a tyrant —"
"Best kind." She bent and bit my shoulder — not hard enough to break skin, hard enough that I'd feel it tomorrow and smile — and the sharp little shock of it tipped me over some edge I'd been clinging to. I came hard, groaning into her neck, and she kept moving through it, drawing it out, her own rhythm faltering now, going uneven.
"Don't stop," she whispered — the first thing she'd said all night that wasn't teasing, and it cracked something open in my chest. "Please don't — *yes* —"
She came with a shout that startled the ravens off the chimney, her whole body seizing around me, gripping me like a vise, and then she collapsed forward onto my chest, laughing and panting and utterly wrecked.
"Quenched," she declared into my collarbone.
We sat there in the cooling forge, tangled together on the workbench, while the coal bed settled into embers. Her head was on my chest. My arms were around her. Soot was everywhere — on her, on me, ground into both of us like we'd been rolled in it. I had never been filthier or happier in my life.
"So," I said eventually. "How was the warm-up?"
She lifted her head and grinned at me, hair stuck to her forehead, a fresh smudge across her nose. "Adequate. For a beginner." She poked my chest. "But I've got standards, Ethan Parker. And a professional reputation."
"As a blacksmith."
"As a *thorough* blacksmith." She slid off my lap — I mourned the loss immediately — and stretched, gloriously naked and unbothered, before walking to the quench barrel. "Come here." This chapter was taken from novelping . com without permission.
"Why?"
"Because the best part of quenching is the water." She climbed *into* the barrel — it was a big one, waist-high, built for full-length blades — and held out a hand. "Come on. It's cold. You'll hate it. It'll be great."
I joined her. It was freezing. I hated it. It was great.
We stood chest-deep in the quench water, her arms around my neck, my hands on her hips under the water, and she kissed me — slower this time, deeper, the teasing gone soft around the edges. The forge glowed beyond the barrel's rim. Steam rose off her shoulders where the cold water met her hot skin.
"Hold still," she murmured, and ducked under the water.
I yelped. "Sable — what are you —"
Her hands slid down my thighs under the water, and then her mouth found me, and the contrast — the freezing water, her hot mouth — short-circuited every thought I'd ever had. I grabbed the rim of the barrel with both hands and held on like a man in a storm. Under the water I could see the blurred shape of her, dark hair floating, completely at home, completely unhurried. She took her time. She *enjoyed* herself — I could tell by the way her hands kneaded my hips, possessive and playful at once, like she was already deciding where to put me next.
When she surfaced, water streaming down her face, she was grinning like she'd won something.
"Professional opinion?" I managed.
"Excellent edge retention," she said solemnly, and then laughed so hard she snorted water. "Gods, your face."
"You just — in the quench barrel —"
"Best quenching you've ever had. Admit it."
"I've never been quenched before."
"Then it's also the *worst* quenching you've ever had, and you still loved it." She kissed me, tasting of cold iron and heat, and her hand drifted down under the water again, stroking me slow and easy. "See? Already recovering. Good steel bounces back."
"You have a metaphor for everything."
"I'm a blacksmith. Everything *is* a metaphor." Her forehead rested against mine, her expression softening. "You know what the town calls me? Behind my back. 'The anvil widow.' Because no man would have me, so I married my work instead."
"That's awful."
"That's Millbrook." She smiled, but it was smaller now. "Thirty-three years old, Ethan. Do you know the last time someone touched me like they *wanted* to? Not like it was charity. Not like they were settling."
I thought about the right answer, and then I gave her the true one instead: "Then they've all been idiots, and I'm the luckiest man in Aldermere."
"Flatterer." But her arms tightened around my neck, and she kissed me again, harder this time, and the water sloshed over the barrel's edge as she pulled me against her.
What followed was slower and somehow rougher at the same time — her lifting me half out of the water to kiss down my chest, pausing to bite each of my nipples just hard enough to make me curse, me carrying her — *trying* to carry her, she laughed so hard she nearly drowned us both, water sloshing over the barrel's edge onto the floor — back to the workbench, where she bent over it on her elbows at my urging ("Your turn to be the workpiece," I said, and she *cackled*) and I took her from behind with one hand fisted in her wet hair and the other gripping her hip hard enough to leave fingerprints.
"Harder," she demanded, laughing and gasping at once. "Come on, city boy, put your back into it — *yes* — gods, *yes* —"
The workbench rocked. Tools rattled. A hammer fell off the anvil with a clang that made us both laugh too hard to continue for a full minute, foreheads pressed together, shaking.
"Professional establishment," I wheezed.
"Finest forge in Millbrook," she agreed, and pulled me back down to her, and this time there was no laughter in it — just her hand reaching back to grip my wrist, hard, anchoring me, and the low sounds she made with every thrust, building and building until she came with a bitten-off cry, her body clenching around me so tight I saw stars, and I followed her over a heartbeat later, groaning her name into the sweat-slick skin of her back.
The third time was on the pile of coal sacks in the corner — softer landing, she'd said with a wink, "for your delicate office-worker knees" — and it was the slowest of all, face to face, her legs wrapped around my waist, her hands in my hair, no teasing left in it at all. Just heat, and breath, and the low glow of the forge on her soot-streaked skin, and the way she looked at me like I was the first good thing that had happened to her in years. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
I took my time with her — finally, *my* pace, and she let me have it, which from Sable felt like the greatest gift of the night. I kissed every soot smudge I could find: the one on her collarbone, the one low on her ribs, the faint one at the corner of her mouth she'd missed. She watched me do it with an expression I'd never seen on her — no grin, no dare, just open wonder, like she couldn't quite believe I was real.
"You're going to ruin me," she whispered.
"Good," I said, and pushed into her slow and deep, and she arched up off the coal sacks with a gasp that turned into my name.
We moved together like we'd been doing it for years instead of hours — no performance, no proving anything, just the two of us and the dark and the dying embers. When she came, it was quiet this time, her nails digging into my back, her forehead pressed hard against mine, breathing my name like a secret. I held her through it, and then she held me while I followed, her arms locked around me like she never intended to let go.
After, we lay on the coal sacks in a tangle of limbs, sharing her work shirt as a blanket because neither of us wanted to get up and find real ones.
After, we lay on the coal sacks in a tangle of limbs, sharing her work shirt as a blanket because neither of us wanted to get up and find real ones. The forge had gone quiet — just embers now, breathing red in the dark.
"Ethan," she said.
"Mm."
"Whatever happens — with the Temple, with all of it —" She propped herself up on one elbow, suddenly serious. "I'm glad you walked into my forge."
I tucked a damp strand of hair behind her ear. "Best decision I ever made. Including the nail."
"The nail was terrible."
"The nail was *straight*."
She was laughing into my shoulder when the pounding started on the forge door.
We both froze. Sable was on her feet in an instant, stark naked and utterly unembarrassed, grabbing a poker like a weapon. "Who's there?" she barked. "Forge is closed!"
"It's me!" Paula's voice, urgent, through the wood. "Open up — both of you decent? No? Get decent *fast*."
Sable swore creatively and started throwing clothes at me. We dressed in record time — her shirt on inside-out, my trousers still damp from the quench barrel — and she slid the bolt.
Paula stood in the doorway in full leathers, sword on her hip, face grim. Behind her, the town bell was ringing — not the cheerful morning bell. The slow, heavy one.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
Paula looked at me, then at Sable — took in the soot, the inside-out shirt, the general state of us — and her grim expression cracked just slightly at the corners.
"Enjoy your evening?" she said dryly.
"Paula."
"Right. Sorry." She straightened. "The Temple crier just rode through Millbrook. Sister Maren has announced a public sermon — tomorrow at noon, in the town square. Subject: 'the corruption of grace and the man who carries it.'" Paula's eyes met mine. "Ethan. They're going to denounce you. Publicly. In front of the whole town."
The forge seemed very quiet suddenly. Sable's hand found mine — rough, warm, steady.
"Well," Sable said, squeezing my fingers hard. "Looks like the warm-up's over for everyone."
Outside, the bell kept ringing.