Page 45 of Full Send

It’s fine though. I needed to work on this. This is the second time I’ve tried this particular steel combination. I rushed, working angrily, and screwed it up the first time. I wasted all of those hours making the last set of billets, the layered blanks of steel, that get turned into blades. I had to make another set, but now I’m almost out of the steel I salvaged for one of the two layers. I better not mess it up again.

The process for making these blades is long and can be pretty frustrating some times. First, there’s picking the rightcombination of steels to use. Then it takes hours and hours to weld layers upon layers of the two steels together to make a billet. It’s definitely the mind numbing part of the process. For these knives, I had to melt down the old steel I found around the barn and cast it into a shape that I was able to make into the layered billet.

After making a new set, I finally get to have some fun. That’s what I’m doing tonight. The fun part. I let out an audible laugh that overshadows the sound of the flames from the blazing hot furnace.

Fun.

Fuck yeah, I definitely had some fun tonight. Well, all day really.

My body feels like it’s on fire. It feels electric. And it’s not the two thousand degree furnace I’m standing in front of. The images, the sounds, the feelings. The memory of the whole day is flooding back through me. Ronni pulling my hair to bring my face into her while she wrapped her legs around me while she came. The feeling of cupping the back of her head and tugging her braids while her lips worked on my dick. Her hushed little moans and whimpers while I fingered her in the mudroom. All of these things I’ve only barely let myself dream of happening today. It’s everything I’ve ever imagined and so much more.

Fuck me. This is intense. I need to clear my head if I’m going to bang one out tonight.

Normally when I work on knives, especially the forging part, it’s when I’m depressed, thinking about how alone it feels here sometimes. Other times when I’m angry, my mind shifts that depression into a feeling of unfairness. For some obvious reason, banging and pounding hunks of red hot steel for hours gets all of that out of my system.

A release.

I look back at the furnace, the larger of the two blanks is an intense shade of red, ready to be worked. I pull it out by the temporary handle and put it in the forge press. I start hammering the red hot block of metal over and over until it’s nearly a quarter the thickness it started, then fold it over on itself before hammering more.

When the metal starts to drop below its working temperature, I place it in the furnace again to get it back to that shade of blazing red. I’ll do this for hours and hours, creating layer after layer of thin, hardened, forge welded steel to get something good enough to turn into a finished knife eventually.

While I wait for the steel to get back to the right temperature, I look over at Rex. He’s somehow sleeping on his bed in the corner of the barn despite all the noise I’m making. A smile forms on my now sweaty, dirty face. I’ve always been jealous of his ability to just sleep, anywhere, any time.

There’s an eerie silence in the workshop while I wait for the steel to reheat. Normally by now, my heartbeat is pounding and my breathing is labored. But something is different tonight.

The anger, the sadness, the rage that normally fuels me are gone, replaced by something so different. A sense of calmness, a clear mind.

Normally, I try to do anything to distract myself from how much I miss my old friends and family. How much I miss having Ronni in my life. I’ve tried dating but never felt a real connection to any of them, always comparing them to her. It always felt like my brain was a chaotic mess, the sound of radio static.

Tonight though, my head is crystal clear.

I realize I’ve been working slow. Steady and focused. The emotions that have clouded and filled my head for so long are gone. At least for now.

All I can think about isher.

The feeling of her touch, her lips, the sight of her smile, and the sound of her laugh.

But now, instead of a distant memory, like looking at a piece of art in a museum I can’t touch, it’s real.

“Fuck.”

I say the word out loud, breaking the silence in the barn.

Is this what it feels like to feel whole? To be happy?

Chapter 22

Veronica

Marmot

Another day, another mudroom induced morning of waking up aching between my legs. I can physically feel how much my body wants to be with Tanner. Somehow in less than thirty-six hours, this part of me has gone from an afterthought and the butt of Collin and Lizzy’s joke, to completely alive. Longing not just to be touched, but for his touch.

I can hear Collin and Lizzy in the dining room, and this time I don’t even care that I’m running a little behind on my own schedule.

I reach between my legs and give myself the slightest tease, savoring just how much my body wants him. For the first time that I can remember in years, I’m not thinking of giving myself a release, but instead of waiting to be with him again. Craving him to take my body where it needs to go, where I want it to go. The thought of denying myself pleasure now, while waiting for the next stolen moment with him, is wildly thrilling. I grab my phone, sending Tanner a text.

Me: It’s the second day I’ve woken up wet thinking about you. I’d take care of these needs if I wasn’t going to see you later. ;) XOXO.

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