Son of a Beard

by Lani Lynn Vale

Oh, how wrong we were.

  Chapter 3

  I already want to take a nap tomorrow.

  -Verity’s secret thoughts

  Verity

  Three months later

  “What the hell,” I muttered as I shouldered my truck door open and practically fell out.

  Then I stopped, sent a quick text to Randi, my best friend, to let her know where I was in case someone decided to kidnap me, and headed for the door.

  “This place has got to be in the worst part of town,” I muttered to myself as I walked to the door of the house and knocked.

  No one answered.

  I checked my phone, double checking the address, and frowned.

  This place looked like a house.

  In fact, if I had to guess where to get drugs in the small town of Mooresville, Alabama, it would be on Stark Street, where I was currently standing.

  “Fuck me,” I grumbled, backed away, and turned to survey my surroundings.

  There was a driveway on one side of the porch, and a small walkway on the other.

  Going down the steps, I made my way to the walkway, and froze when I saw the bike directly next to the house.

  It was pretty.

  Though, it was missing a seat, and my heart started to pound.

  It couldn’t be.

  Carefully making my way past the huge motorcycle, I started walking, and that’s when I heard it.

  Hammering.

  In fact, I would say it sounded more like metal smashing against metal. Like someone was pounding something into submission.

  Kind of like a bladesmith.

  Smiling, I started to hurry in the direction of the noise, knowing I had to be in the right place.

  My dad might have his dream birthday present after all.

  My first mistake was not preparing myself.

  The moment I saw the motorcycle, I should’ve known. Should’ve seen what was happening.

  But I didn’t and I fucked up.

  I allowed myself to think that I was invincible, and I wasn’t.

  My heart, the thing that was still half broken but healing every day, started to pound the minute I pushed open the door to the shed-like thing at the back of the property, where the hammering was the loudest.

  At first, it took time for my eyes to adjust, but once they did, boy oh boy were they rewarded.

  There was a man standing with his back to me, one hand had a large hammer in it, and the other hand a long piece of glowing hot steel.

  He was swinging the hammer at the metal, and each time he did, his muscles would flex.

  When it would hit, the same muscles would bunch and release before he repeated the process all over again.

  He was sweaty, too. Oh, so sweaty.

  And he had a beard. From what little of it I could see, it was a magnificent one, too.

  I bet he could do good things with that beard…

  He turned, giving me a side view of his face, and I gasped.

  I knew that beard!

  I knew that face!

  I’d ridden that beard!

  It’d been buried between my thighs.

  Oh, sweet Jesus.

  I had to get out of there.

  Turning, I was about to run back the way I came when the movement caught Truth’s attention, and he turned fully.

  We both froze, staring at each other.

  Then his mouth tipped up into a leering grin, and he said, “If it isn’t Ms. Very.”

  I pursed my lips.

  Very had been something he’d called me from the moment we woke up the next morning. After all of the riding and burying.

  “H-hey,” I mumbled. “I was…”

  “Leaving?” he guessed.

  I straightened my spine and shook my head. “Uh, no.”

  I never, for the life of me, expected to see the last man I slept with hammering something as I walked inside, but there was a first for everything.

  The man sent shivers down my spine.

  I’d done my best to ignore everyone and everything when they asked about that man they saw me leaving the wedding with that night all those months ago.

  Why? Because I still yearned for him.

  I still wanted to ride that beard like I did that night and smother myself in his scent.

  “You’re a blacksmith?” I asked in confusion.

  Had I even asked him what he did for a living?

  He turned back to his work, picking up exactly where he’d left off when he first saw me.

  Only this time, he was turned so he could see me out of the corner of his eye.

  “Bladesmith,” he muttered, still not taking his eyes off of what he was hammering. “Different set of training, and different set of skills are required to do the two.”

  “But you can do a blacksmith’s work?” I continued.

  Why was I prolonging this?

  The answer was an easy one. The man was sexy.

  Hot, sweaty. His head was dripping sweat down his neck, and it was disappearing into the collar of his shirt.

  His gray shirt was wet all the way down to his waistband where you could see the different shades of grey.

  “Yep,” he confirmed. “I was a blacksmith before I started to hone my skills into doing this for a living.”

  “Do you ever worry that your beard is going to catch on fire?” I asked before I could stop myself.

  He stopped what he was doing and leaned up, picking up the piece of metal and shoving it back into the burning hot coals.

  “No,” he admitted. “Should I?”

  I shrugged.

  “Those sparks are bouncing everywhere…I was just curious.”

  He grinned, and I watched as a drop of sweat dripped down from his hairline, around the curve of his eye, down the side of his nose, and then dropped onto the floor among a ton of similar drops just like the one that’d just landed.

  When I looked back up again, it was to realize that his eyes were still on me.

  “I wasn’t sure this was the place I was looking for,” I continued babbling. “You should put a sign out front.”

  He shrugged, and then pulled the metal back out of the coals.

  This time it was glowing bright yellow.

  “Have you ever touched that before?” I questioned.

  He set the metal down onto the metal anvil like thing, and then lifted one arm.

  I saw a nasty looking scar right above his right elbow, which happened to be the only thing not inked on one arm.

  “Ouch,” I murmured.

  “What are you looking for?” he asked as he picked his hammering back up.

  I fished a piece of paper out of my pocket, and unfolded it.

  “A couple of months ago, my dad told me he wanted one of these. But I haven’t been able to find it anywhere that didn’t come from the other side of the world. And not cost my firstborn child in shipping,” I murmured, walking towards him and his hammer.

  The one in his hands, not the one in his pants.

  His eyes shot to me, and he looked at my belly like I was about to announce something that clearly wouldn’t have appealed to him, and I waved him off.

  “I don’t actually have any children,” I admitted. “So you can wipe that panicked look off your face.”

  He shrugged without apology.

  “A Roman sword?” he asked. “Why that?”

  “My dad is a big history buff,” I explained. “We visited Rome last year, and he fell in love with everything over there, especially this sword that is supposed to be an exact replica of the first Roman sword ever made.”

  He nodded his head, then went back to hammering.

  “What are you making right now?” I asked, leaning closer.

  He moved me with his hip and said, “Don’t get that close. You’re not wearing protection.”

  I bit my lip, my mind automatically going back to other protection that he’d worn.<
br />
  And then I cursed myself.

  Get your mind out of the gutter, Verity!

  I stepped back and gave him the space that he needed, and saw a chair in the corner of the room.

  Thinking that I’d just left my workout and I was on the closer end to being exhausted than not, I took a seat and waited for him to finish.

  ***

  Truth

  I hadn’t expected that.

  Well, I had been expecting someone.

  Two someones, actually. But not this particular someone.

  Finishing up the last bit of shaping for the latest blade I was forging, I thrust it into the cold water at my feet and then turned to survey the woman.

  Verity, aka Very.

  The woman who I’d slept with almost three months to the day ago and still masturbated to almost every single night.

  She’d gotten skinnier, but not by much.

  I would say she looked better, but I’d be lying.

  I was quite fond of the curves she had before, but this new look, the more toned ass, and the yoga pants slicked over it—well, I kind of was into this look, too.

  “What was the cost of the sword to have it made over there and shipped?” I asked, stripping my leather apron off and laying it against the table next to my hammer.

  “A couple grand…” she hesitated. “Well, to be exact, it was around twelve thousand dollars, three of it was the shipping.”

  I blinked.

  “I can probably make that one for you for around five, but it’s not going to be quick,” I admitted. “I have about six ahead of you, and four of them are big projects.”

  She shrugged. “That’s okay. Are you thinking before Christmastime, at least?”

  I walked to the wall where my calendar—one of naked women from the waist up—and flipped through the months.

  “You have about two and a half months until Christmas, and I expect these next builds to take me right on in to January…but I’ll see what I can do. I’m not promising anything,” I informed her. “Likely, I’ll overshoot January, too. But we’ll see.”

  She blinked, then nodded in understanding. “I’d like to add my name to the list.”

  My mouth kicked up in a semblance of a smile.

  Then my first appointment showed.

  Causing me to grimace.

  “Yo!”

  Verity jumped and turned only her head to look at the door that was at her back, and immediately stood.

  “I should go,” she said hastily.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I told her. “I’m sure you remember Eugene.”

  Verity grimaced and waved.

  Eugene was the spitting image of Kenneth. Seeing as they were twins, it wasn’t unheard of.

  “H-hi, Verity,” Eugene looked apologetic. “I didn’t know you were going to be here.”

  Verity shrugged her shoulders. “I didn’t either.”

  Eugene offered her a shy smile, and I felt sorry for the both of them.

  “Eugene isn’t the asshole that his brother is,” I told her. “Though, I’m sure you already know that. In secret, Eugene likes to tattle on his brother and slur his name.”

  Verity snorted.

  “I know,” she snickered. “I was on the receiving end of that one. And for the record, Eugene, I should’ve listened to you.”

  My brows rose and Verity was quick to explain.

  “Eugene here tried to talk me out of marrying Kenneth,” she smiled. “Though, I guess, technically, I did listen. I didn’t marry him, after all.”

  Eugene smiled and moved further into the room, stopping at the table closer to me than Verity, and it was then that I saw what was really going on.

  Eugene had a thing for her, but since she’d been with his brother, he’d put what he felt on the backburner.

  And sadly, I became irrationally jealous over the fact that they had something that Verity and I did not.

  We had one night of great sex, but Verity and Kenneth had been together for over a year. Eugene had to have known her a whole lot better than I did.

  And I didn’t like that.

  Not one single freakin’ bit.

  “You want to go to lunch with us?” I asked, moving closer to her.

  She blinked, looked from Eugene to me, and then nodded.

  “Sure.”

  “Weren’t you supposed to meet the girl who shall not be named?” Eugene said his first complete sentence since he’d gotten there.

  That’d actually been the reason Eugene had come over. He was my scapegoat. The man that I was going to tell Destiny that I was heading to lunch with.

  And what better way to get the fuck away from her with the man already here?

  “Yeah,” I picked up my phone that was on the table by the door. “But I can just leave her shit outside.”

  “Isn’t it her birth certificate and social security card?” Eugene started to snort, but when he saw that I was serious, he sobered. “You have to wait. You can’t leave stuff like that out on the porch. Anyone could take it.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Always the Boy Scout,” I mumbled. “I gotta take a shower anyway. I’ll do that, and you can wait for the devil to come, and you can give her her shit.”

  “Who’s the devil?” Verity asked as she got up off her chair.

  I looked down at her, my gaze momentarily getting lost in her eyes.

  “Uhh,” I said as I came to the back steps. “Destiny.”

  Verity blinked.

  “You still let her come over here?” she asked incredulously.

  I shrugged. “The day I caught her cheating on me, I kicked her out. I’ve been slowly going through everything, and if she wants it, she comes to get it on Thursday before the trash goes out on Friday. Most of the time I leave it by the curb, and she has to beat off the people that go through it. She asked specifically for her passport, birth certificate, and social security card, though. And I’m not that much of an ass, even though ol’ Eugene here thinks otherwise.”

  Eugene held up his hand, but stopped from following us inside.

  “Got a call. Give me a few.” He held up his finger and put his phone to his ear.

  Verity followed me inside, stopping short when I did.

  “When he gets inside, will you tell him where these are?” I asked.

  She nodded her head, and I touched the tip of my index finger to the tip of her nose.

  Fuck, she looked good.

  And those yoga capri pants were doing wonderful things to her ass.

  The top wasn’t anything too fancy, just a black racerback tank that was tight around her bust and shoulders.

  The bottom was clinging to her slightly rounded belly, and I found myself remembering what it was like to run my lips down the soft skin of her navel.

  “Shower?”

  I blinked, coming back to the present to find Verity staring at me with a knowing look in her eyes.

  “Yeah,” I murmured. “Be back.”

  I stripped my shirt off next to the couch, and didn’t miss the swift inhalation from the woman behind me.

  With a smile on my face, I headed to my bathroom, stripping as I went.

  By the time I got to the shower, I was naked but for my boxer briefs, which I pushed off not seconds later.

  Turning on the shower, I got in, thankful for the cold water.

  I needed a new water heater. Had needed one for months now.

  But I hadn’t gotten it yet, because showering in cold water kept me from masturbating to the sight of Verity coming every two hours.

  I hadn’t taken a warm shower since that night in Vegas when I’d taken her there, hot water scalding my back as I did.

  I heard someone knock, and I rinsed off the soap, hastily got out, and grabbed a towel off the rack as I did.

  My bathroom was small, but it wasn’t nearly as small anymore now that I didn’t have to contend with all
of Destiny’s bras, makeup, and hair products.

  It was nice to be able to take a shower without having to remove everything from the shower beforehand.

  In fact, I would almost claim that I…

  “What are you doing here?” Destiny’s annoying voice came through my paper-thin walls. “This is my house, bitch!”

  I wrapped the towel around my waist, and yanked the door open to the bathroom, not stopping until I was through the bedroom door, and stalking up behind Verity who was blocking the entrance with her body.

  “I’m not sure what you mean. From my understanding, this is Truth’s house, correct?” Verity asked ever so sweetly.

  Destiny’s eyes filled with rage.

  Then her mouth turned up into a smirk.

  “You just like having my sloppy seconds?” Destiny mouthed off.

  Verity didn’t even stiffen.

  “It seems like I got the better end of the stick with this one,” Verity said, pressing her back against my still-wet chest. “I’ve, of course, had them both. What I can’t understand, though, is why you would go to Kenneth when you have something like this.”

  She ran her hand up the side of my chest possessively.

  And whether it was just for show or not, it was enough to make my semi-hard on—the one that came on the instant I realized that Verity was close—to steel pipe hardness in a matter of milliseconds.

  I ground my cock into her ass, forgetting momentarily that Eugene was somewhere in the house behind us, and the she witch was in front of us…frothing at the mouth because she felt like Verity slighted her somehow.

  You know, by taking her boyfriend or something.

  Bitch.

  “Did you need anything else?”

  Verity’s voice was breathy, like I was affecting her just as much as she was affecting me.

  “Yes,” she snapped. “I came here to talk to Truth.”

  “From what I understand, y’all have nothing to talk about. Just like I have nothing to talk to Kenneth about, correct?”

  God, she sounded so prim and proper that I wanted to strip the pants from her lower half and fuck that proper right out of her.

  But then Destiny had to go and open her mouth, reminding me that she was there when I didn’t want her to be.

  I’d much rather have Verity on her back, or her legs high in the air, while I drilled my cock inside of her.