All Chapters of When Forbidden Feels This Good: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

Cade’s POVThe city moved past the tinted windows as we drove, and the man, who had not yet given me his name, talked. He talked about the traffic and the weather and a restaurant he had eaten at the previous evening and the specific merits of a particular brand of sneaker he was currently wearing, pointing his foot toward me at one point as if the shoe itself was evidence of something. His voice was a constant, cheerful current, running alongside the drive without requiring much from me in the way of response.I let it run.My mind was in Texas.I was thinking about the morning, about the darkness in the bedroom when I had finally, after lying awake for two hours, made the argument to myself and decided to leave without waking her. I had looked at her face in the dark, soft in sleep in a way it rarely was when she was conscious and managing everything, and the thought of watching her eyes open and fill, of seeing the moment she understood I was really going, had been something I foun

Cade’s POV"General, let's be civil here."I kept my voice level. Not placating, not frightened, just even, the tone of a man who has walked into unexpected situations before and has learned that the first thing panic does is cost you the only advantage you might have, which is the appearance of someone who has not been caught off guard."You are making a big mistake. I cannot do this. It might blow my cover."The General looked at me across the desk with the particular expression of a man who has been in rooms like this one many times and finds the early stages of negotiation mildly entertaining, the way a chess player finds the opening moves entertaining, not because they are uncertain of the outcome but because they enjoy watching the pieces begin to understand the shape of the board."Might, you say." He turned the cigar between his fingers once, slowly, a gesture I was beginning to understand was his version of punctuation. "I mean, that means there is always a way out, right?"T

Cade’s POVHis expression was the most honest it had been since I walked through his door, stripped of the warmth and the cigar-and-whisky ease, stripped of the elaborate performance of a man in control of every variable. What was underneath was something older and more elemental, the expression of someone who has just understood that the room they thought they owned has other people in it."You son of a bitch," he said.Quietly. With the specific, concentrated fury of someone who is too intelligent to let it become something louder, because louder would be the loss, and he was not prepared to lose in front of the five men at the table.I reached into my jacket pocket and put on my sunglasses."Wrong," I said. "I am the son of James Blackwood, leader and heir to the Blackwood syndicate."I picked up my design folder from the chair where I had set it when I sat down, what felt like several lifetimes ago, before I understood what kind of room this was and what kind of meeting I had been

Scarlett’s POVThe word baby.Not the pregnancy. Not the situation. Not the complication. My baby.Something cracked open in my chest, something that had been sealed shut since the sonographer turned the screen and said two, something that had been managing the information from a careful distance, maintaining the professional neutrality of a person who had not yet decided what to feel about any of this.It cracked open, and what came through was not grief, not fear, not the enormous complicated weight of everything this meant and everything it would cost.What came through was something simpler.Relief.Pure and unqualified and slightly terrifying in its simplicity. The relief of a person who has been carrying something alone and has just been told they don't have to anymore. The relief of hearing a voice and knowing that the voice meant it, that work can wait, was not a performance of priority but the actual statement of one, that 'my baby needs me' was the complete sentence, and the

Scarlett’s POVI looked up again because the first look had not fully processed what was in front of it and required a second to complete the task.He was tall. The kind of tall that announced itself without effort, that reorganised the spatial relationships of the people around it simply by being present. Broad through the shoulders in the way that spoke of something more than gym work, something structural, the particular build of a man whose body had been shaped by actual physical demands rather than aesthetic ones. His skin was deep brown and smooth, the kind of complexion that caught warm light and held it, and his face was, there was no other word available that was not immediately inadequate, his face was arresting.Strong jaw. Cheekbones that belonged on a sculpture in a museum, I would have restored. A mouth that was currently arranged in an expression of mild, genuine amusement, not performing patience but actually possessing it. And eyes, dark and long-lashed and carrying i