Page 67 of Forbidden Fruit
“Are you telling me you’re not confident enough in your masculinity to wear nail polish?”
“Oh, I’m confident in my masculinity,” he says. “I canshow you just how confident I am, I just don’t need pink nail polish to prove it.”
I tilt my head, batting my eyelashes with mock innocence. “Oh, come on… pretty please?”
He sighs, shaking his head like it’s some tremendous sacrifice, but I catch the softening in his gaze, the warmth he can’t quite hide. “Alright, alright. Enough. You need to rest.”
I blink at him, wide-eyed and innocent. “Is that a yes? You’ll let me paint your nails?”
He cringes, exasperation and amusement warring in his expression. “If I say yes, can we please stop talking about it?”
I nod eagerly, my smile too bright to conceal. “Deal.”
He sighs. Dramatically. “Fine. Yes. But…”
I don’t let him finish. I’m already out of bed before he can stop me.
“Blair…” he warns.
“Don’t move.”
He just chuckles.
I cross the room and pull open the dresser drawer where he leaves his things. I grab one of his white shirts, oversized, smelling like soap and him, and slip it on without thinking. It hangs off my frame, brushing the tops of my thighs.
I return thirty seconds later, slightly breathless, holding a tiny bottle of hot pink nail polish.
Calvin raises a brow. “Blair.”
“I won’t spill it.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about.”
I crawl into his lap, settle there like it’s home. “Give me your hands.”
He groans but gives them to me anyway, palms down, fingers long and calloused.
I unscrew the cap and start with his left thumb. The contrast is almost too much to handle, his too-big, rough handagainst the bright, pink polish. My tiny hand wrapped around his. His forearms flexing every time I paint too close to his skin.
And still, he lets me.
Lets me paint each nail carefully, one by one, while I sit in his lap with the kind of trust that only comes from things we won’t say out loud.
“I feel like you’re trying to humiliate me.”
I grin.
“I would never. Trust me, pink is so your color.”
“Liar.”
Still, he doesn’t stop me.
I finish one hand and gently blow across his knuckles to help them dry. He watches the way my mouth shapes the air, his eyes dark with something I don’t dare name.
“You know,” I murmur, moving to his other hand, “you’re a really good canvas.”
“That supposed to be a compliment?”
