Page 64 of Forbidden Fruit
“Huh?”
“It’s something my dad used to say to my mom whenever she was thinking too much. Worry me, put your burden on me,” he explains. I fall more in love with his parents’ relationship every time he tells me a story about them. It sounds like he grew up in such a gentle, loving home. “Come here,” he pulls me down on his lap. “Worry me.”
“It’s just… Abigail told us that your mom can’t come to the wedding because she lives in Europe, so I guess I’m wondering why she can’t make it?”
“Right.” He frowns. “My mom can’t make it to the wedding because she doesn’t know I’m getting married, justmy brother does.” I stiffen and try to get off his lap, but he won’t let me.
“What do you mean she doesn’t know you’re getting married?” I ask. It was my understanding that he is close to his mom, and he doesn’t seem like the type to get married and not tell her. What is going on?
“Things are complicated, and I can’t tell you everything right now,” he says, like that’s supposed to be enough. “But I promise, when the time is right, I will.”
I stare at him, jaw tightening. That exact line. Again. From both him and Abby. I’m so sick of it I could scream.
“What is so damn complicated that you can’t just come out and say it?” I snap, pushing off his lap.
“Blair…” There’s a warning in his tone that I’d give a fuck about if I didn’t feel like I’d wandered into the part of the book where the heroine realizes the love story was just the setup for the fall.
“Fuck that, uncomplicate it now,” I yell, throwing my hands up. “Because I’m not playing these fucking games with you.”
The instant the words leave my mouth, I know I’ve gone too far.
Calvin rises from his seat slowly, and it’s so deliberate it almost feels theatrical. I’d roll my eyes if not for the hair prickling at the back of my neck. Sometimes I forget just how much bigger he is than me, how easily he could take up all the air in the room if he wanted to.
Every line of his body goes taut, his expression shifting from warm to lethal in an instant. That calm, dangerous silence settles over him like a second skin, and it makes something deep inside me clench.
He towers above me now, still, composed, but radiating quiet menace.
Every instinct I have screams at me to step back.
But I don’t.
“You’ve got one more fuck left in you,” he says in the kind of voice that makes the air feel thinner, the room smaller. It would make anyone else back down.
But not me.
Because apparently, I have a death wish.
I step closer instead, chin tilted, eyes defiant.
“Or what?” I ask sharply, though there’s a tremor beneath my voice I can’t hide. “What thefuckare you going to do about it?”
He drags his thumb slowly across his bottom lip, eyes raking over me like he’s already decided my fate. Then his lips curl into a cold smile, void of mercy.
“You’ve got five seconds,” he says, “to get your ass in the playroom and assume the position.”
My stomach drops. I open my mouth. “Calvin, wait…”
He cuts me off with a look that strips the rebellion right out of me. “If I have to repeat myself,” he says quietly, “your punishment will not be merciful.”
That tone lights me up and terrifies me all at once. Every nerve hums. My pulse pounds. Desire and dread twist into something molten and electric.
I swallow hard. Then turn. I start to walk, cautious, calculating, but I don’t get far.
“If I were you,” he says, voice like thunder, “I wouldn’t walk.”
I freeze.
“I’d run.”
