The Blacksmith (Foxworth Stud Ranch Book 2)

by Mia Madison

  Blacksmith

  A Steamy Older Man Romance

  by

  Mia Madison

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. Thank you for respecting the rights of the author.

  Copyright © 2017 Mia Madison. All rights reserved. Including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the author.

  Version 2017.4.21

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  Blacksmith

  Chapter One

  Quint

  My fire's burning good and hot.

  Now that it's reached the perfect temperature for bending the metal to my will, I have a small window of opportunity to take control.

  I pull the heavy leather glove onto my right hand and slam the hammer down with a resounding metallic bang. The steel puts up the tiniest hint of resistance before caving to my pounding. I bring the huge iron head crashing down again, my bicep flexing with every jarring clang. Over and over I slam the hammerhead and see the steel surrendering its strength and giving in to mine. It's the most satisfying thing in my life. I know the exact degree of the molten steel's temperature just by looking, by the color of the orange red point.

  The instant it starts to cool, I shove it back into the fire to take it back to the pinnacle of perfection. Then I slam down the heavy hammer forcing the volcanic metal to bend into shape. My body feels slick with a glistening of sweat. Drops fall from my shoulders and let out a sizzle as they expire in the embers. Most blacksmiths wear a thick shirt and leather apron for protection.

  I don't do protection.

  Ever.

  I like to feel my skin heat up from the flames and start to cool as they die back. I can sense the perfect temperature for forging in my every pore. It's like me and the metal are doing battle. Until it has no choice but to cave and we become one. Then she molds to the form I designed.

  She.

  As though the steel is my woman. Perhaps she is. The only one I want. I don't need anyone else in my life but the momentary surrender of the metal at last, after a finely drawn battle for control. It's delicious. Lascivious. As climactic as anything I've ever known. Yeah, I know, I have a tendency to get poetic about my steel.

  It's nearly midnight, my favorite time to work on a project. Beating the metal into shape works off stress and fatigues me enough for sleep.

  I let the fire cool at last, my taut body spent of pent up tension and the metal formed to my design without losing its power. Over-hammering makes for weak design. I make sure the embers are doused in my workshop forge and head out, ready to be alone with the night, in my small house.

  “Hey Quint, you out were-wolfing?”

  It's Shea, one of the hands on the ranch, although they prefer to call themselves cowboys. They think it's the Wild West out here on Foxworth Ranch, so huge in acreage, it's the perfect place for a man to hide. Three of them are sitting around a fire, sprawled across hay bales, one on an oil drum, watching the flames and shooting the shit like always.

  Shea is rarely seen now, since he brought that little girl, Dallyce, to live with him, the only other woman on the ranch aside from the boss's daughter. Together the two women are building some fancy retreat as part of the ranch. It wont be long 'til all those fancy ass New Yorkers are coming down here seeking real life. I look up and see the moon is nearly full, hence the lame remark from Shea.

  “Nah, just a little personal work,” I tell him and keep walking on by.

  “What you making in there, hammering away at midnight?”

  “What else is he gonna hammer?” Rafe says. “Quint hasn't had a woman in years.”

  “What's it to you?” I growl, like the wolf they're joshing me about.

  “Nothing, Dude, just kidding around to pass the time. Sit down. Grab a brew.”

  “Not tonight. I got an early start.”

  “We all got an early start. And some have got princesses to keep happy.”

  The guys laugh and exchange looks. There's been nothing but jock talk since the announcement was made that Shea's taking himself a bride. None of us older guys ever expected to find ourselves a lifetime girl.

  “Hey Quint, what do you think your chances are of scoring a princess?” Jessop calls at my back.

  “We're running a pool with the guys next rodeo. First one to get a princess's panties off takes the pot.”

  That's Rafe, always acting like a stud.

  “Count me out,” I say. “Don't we have enough trouble with Princess Foxworth?”

  A round of jeers passes between the cowboys. We all struggle with the boss's daughter, Chloe, since she turned eighteen and went to Europe to train in dressage at some fancy school. Whereas she was once a cute kid, hanging around the cowboys begging to be taken for a ride on a wild horse, now she's turned into a little snot that turns up her nose at the muck on their boots.

  Speaking of muck.

  “I'm fucking filthy guys, I'll say goodnight and hit the shower.”

  My shoulders and forearms are covered with wide black smears from the heat and metal. My chest is gritty with ash from the flame. I still feel the exhilaration from taming the raging heat and the powerful exercise of wrestling the metal into shape. The cowboys and I have that in common. They love to ride a wild beast into submission while I take out my control needs on molten steel. Same thing, different beast.

  “You look same like always Quint, hot and in need of a good woman.”

  “Whaddaya think he's headed to the shower for. Let the horny bastard go.”

  I walk away, giving them a soot-blackened finger and am rewarded with another round of jibes. We're all good. Aside from Jessop, who arrived six months ago, on the lam it would seem although I don't judge, I've worked with the rest of the guys for a couple years now. I wouldn't say we're close buds because I keep myself pretty much to myself, but we get along. Nothing serious, just simple joshing around like guys do.

  I cross the yard and open the door to my little house with the toe of my boot. My hands are blackened. I flip the light with an elbow and as I undo my pants, notice the mixture of grease and filth smeared in the sweat across my round biceps and washboard torso. The exposure to air has made my wood springing up. One more steel bolt that needs to be tempered.

  I step into the shower with the solid rod burning in my palm. Sliding the length in my fist, slowly first, then picking up speed and grip until I feel my thighs clench. After working the tension out of my muscles, the release in my dick is so good. Not like being tightly hugged inside a woman, nowhere near, but then I might have forgotten how that goes at this stage in the game.

  “Someone fuck you over?” Edie had once asked, when a couple of beers had loosened my tongue at one of our barside chats.

  I shrugged it off. Not wanting to get into my past at all, not even with the cute bartender – the only woman I ever have a convo with now. If ever I feel lonesome, all I have to do is head into town for a couple of beers at McDools. I bend Edie's ear with the three sentences that amount to a week's worth of chit chat for me.

  “Let it go,” she'd said. “There's plenty of oth
er salmon in the stream.”

  I tossed her a grin.

  “Out here in the desert is about the furthest you can get from any salmon.”

  She gave me a cute nose wrinkle.

  “We don't get to meet that many women out here on a ranch surrounded by a hundred thousand acres of dust.”

  “You could come into town now and then,” she quips.

  “Yeah I don't like to pick up bar cats.”

  “Best kind. One mewl and you're out of there with only a few scratches for a souvenir.”

  See that's why I dig Edie. She and I are alike. Lonesome, not needing the company of others, even resisting it some.

  “You talking personal experience?” I joked and had a shrug in return. Was I imagining the tiny scowl that accompanied it?

  Chapter TWO

  Edie

  Everyone's got secrets they're trying to keep hidden.

  Maybe that's part of the reason I tend bar. Listening to others allows me to forget my own. And every dude that comes in here only wants to talk. No one ever wants to hear the bartender's woes. I just smile and come back with a smart quip or whatever stoic sage advice I can dredge up. They're usually so glad of my attention, not to mention plenty soused, that they're grateful for anything and treat me like I have the wisdom of the freaking Dalai Lama.

  Quint's different from all the others. I noticed that about him the first time he came in to McDools, the bar I own I a one horse town sandwiched between two mega ranches. There's always a pungent odor of macho alpha in the wood-floored establishment but Quint reeks of masculine man more than all the cowboys put together.

  First few times he took a stool at the bar, he just stared at his drink deep in thought the entire time. I couldn't help but notice the wide breadth of his bicep, flexing as he clasped his hands together, fingers interlaced in a prayer position, although the guy was the furthest thing from devout. He clearly had stuff on his mind and I know better than to intrude on a man until he wants it. What's that they say about crashing into a man's cave and getting bear mauled?

  At the same time, I was intrigued. Not at all like me – I'm usually as bland as a tourist in a foreign country when it comes to my patrons – they all look alike. But the strapping nature of Quint's huge arms had me curious. Just curious, nothing more than that.

  “Getchoo another there?” I asked, real casual, right as he was about to leave.

  “Thanks,” he grunted and sat back down at the stool he always takes.

  Same stool, two from the left every time. Not even looking up from gazing into his drink like a gypsy fortune teller with a crystal ball at the fair.

  “If you find the answer in there, tell a friend,” I quipped, hoping he'd look up.

  “Ain't many of those round here,” he came right back.

  “I hear you. Imagine how it is for me, the only girl in a thousand miles. Running this place, I don't even get to go out for a drink myself.”

  Lo and behold he lifted his head and gave me those astounding dark eyes, almost demonic in their intensity. A sharp pang daggered up through my insides and almost made me stagger like a drunk. Of course, I never drink a drop while the bar's open. As the boss lady, I have to keep myself fully alert for the shenanigans of the cowboys. I could tell he had a bit of the devil in him. Not like any I'd known in the past, who were just plain rotten to the core.

  Quint had a lone wolf nature along with something soulful. I know it sounds stupid, but I'm never wrong about the guys sitting at my bar. I've learned how to decipher a man from cradle to grave as he spills his soul over a brew. The secrets I know, I ought to write one of those how-to books. And then he really surprised me.

  “Have one now,” he husked out in the raspy woodsmoke voice.

  I was about to refuse just because it's become a habit, not to drink with the customers. But then I put down my bar rag, pulled two drafts and two shots and lifted the flap. I hitched up onto the stool beside him and we got to talking.

  “You look like a guy who's running away,” I said.

  “I'm no criminal,” he'd barked through tight lips.

  “I said running away not on the run. Some girl?”

  “Nope. Been a long time since I seen one of those.”

  “You ever need one, you know, a friend, you let me know.”

  “You'd be my first,” he said.

  “You'd be mine too,” I replied right back, then I felt a warm gush of color rush to my cheeks from the double meaning. Quint looked at me strangely, like he was trying to figure out whether I could be trusted. Well, back at you, Dude. I have zero reason to place any faith in your species.

  Then he gave me a wide grin that sparked the room.

  “Friend?”

  “Well, I guess if we're spending so many evenings together, we ought to make it official.”

  He grinned again, looking pleased at his new friend and I have to admit I was too. He wasn't like the others, all the cowboys that did nothing for me in the lust department, there was a deeper side to him. And the next night he came in looking like he'd scrubbed up. The faded black marks ever present on his skin all the way up to his huge taut biceps, like there wasn't soap strong enough to deal with them, were gone. Only a light layer of pink remained where he'd rubbed his skin almost raw.

  Knowing the male species so well, not intimately, just well, I ought to know what makes Quint tick. But even now he's an epic mystery.

  “You ever had your heart broken, Edie?” he looked up as I refilled his rye and asked me out of the blue.

  “Now and then,” I replied with my typical bartender non-committal nonchalance. I figured he wanted to tell me about his heartache.

  “You look like a girl trying to outrun the hurt,” he said and made me startle inside with his perception.

  Suddenly I found myself telling him about Chad back in my home town.

  “I thought it was broken at the time but there's a funny thing about that. In time you wonder why you ever wasted a single moment fretting over a jerk that didn't deserve even a rattler's attention.”

  “It makes for a simpler life to live alone,” he said in that husky low voice.

  “What about passion?”

  “I have my passion.”

  It seemed strange that a man could find obsession in hammering out molten steel on an anvil, but when Quint talks about it I can see the fire reflected in his eyes and soon it transposed to me. I began to feel burning all across my skin like a fire had ignited. I love my bar because it's mine. It's independence and my security and all mine. I don't need any man telling me what I can or cannot do. But I couldn't say McDools is my passion.

  That night, we sat there 'til after closing. While Quint listened, I couldn't help but notice his huge thighs flexing on the stool that almost too small to hold his solid bulk. But mostly I noted how attentive he was. Like he actually wanted to know my story and wasn't just making sawdust small talk.

  “Chad was a dealer,” I told him. “Small time, drugs and guns. We started a bar together in downtown Amarillo and I was doing most of the work while he played at being host. You know, handing out free drinks to his 'clients'. I guess the limelight got more than he could handle with decency. I came back early from visiting my aunt, she raised me after my mom died, and caught him in our bed with the two waitresses.”

  “Douchebag. What kind of ass would do that to a woman like you?”

  “One that needed to be in control to feel like a man. He told me I emasculated him, running the business and treating him like the help.”

  “So you moved down here with the most masculine men in fifty states.”

  “All you guys from Foxworth are the real deal though. You could all pose for macho man magazine ads, not one of you is a fake like Chad.”

  “I'm not sure that's a compliment,” Quint said, a twinkle gathering in his eye.

  “It is, believe me.” I assured him. “There's nothing worse than fake macho.”

  “You don't miss having girlfrie
nds.”

  “I don't miss anything.”

  Later I realize I told my friend the first lie. He went to his truck to head home and I locked up all the doors and windows. Once everything was double secure, I climbed the stairs to my small apartment over the bar and was already missing his company.

  Chapter THREE

  Edie

  I'm late getting my ass outta bed to clean and stock the bar, ready to do it all over again. Usually I fall straight to sleep after being on my feet all day and smiling even when I feel like snarling. Last night though I lay flat on my back staring at the ceiling for the longest time. The lining of my skin felt like it was sparkling. The tingles moved from this part to that but ultimately daggered back to the one sensitive point between my thighs.

  My fingers ran along my hip to slide into my slick folds. I stroked along the length and rubbed small circles round and round the point, picking up speed and pressure until the climax shivered through me. What a let down. You'd think that after so long it would have been a nuclear detonation, not the wimp-out release that left me more ramped up than before.

  Now I've got nowhere left to go for relief and had to lie there, staring into the darkness, thinking how much I need a man. I need the heat of his body smothering me, the faint musky sweat of his aroma moving up my nostrils to fill my brain with lusty hunger. I need his hands moving all over me, touching each part, pinching and pulling in the exact right place.

  And at last, I need his fingers, not mine, parting my soaked lips and finding my hollow entrance with his round head. What I'm craving is that moment of being spread open, invasive and delicious as he slides through the taut muscle into my warm depths. Nothing can give me all of that except a real live man.

  As I wipe dry the glasses coming out of the washer, I'm groggy with lack of sleep and repressed needs. I rub more ferociously as though I can erase all the hunger out of me by taking it out on a beer glass.

  “God, I need to get laid,” I groan. “I ignored it too long and now it's agony.”

  I put some loud music on the stereo system, something to blast away the lust pressing at my edges and dance around the length of the bar while I dry.