Page 13 of Tall, Royal Hater
My breath halted on that thought.
Wait, no. Not me. Never me. Fuck no.
Mariyah was the last woman alive that I’d touch.
Though following the path of needy throbs down my stomach proved otherwise. My own body was painting me as a liar.
I glared at the swollen, aching length of my erection.Fucking traitor.
I wouldn’t rub one out and sate myself in her name, though. She would never know, but that wasn’t the point. I’d never give her that control over me. I hadn’t since she’d turned into a fucking menace, and I wasn’t planning to break that streak.
Our trip to Touma changed nothing.
Mariyah would hang out with Esmeralda and Crown Prince Kai, I’d spend my time with my mum, and the moments I had to put up with Mariyah, I’d keep my mask of composure and indifference in place.
It’d be just the same as the days I tailed Esmeralda in university.
It helped that the menace was returning to Raven two days earlier than Esmeralda and I were to return to Jahandar. Which didn’t seem like a lot. But when it came to Mariyah, it was the difference between keeping my sanity and losing it.
Chapter 4
Mariyah
Iwas on a private Jahandari state plane in the early hours of the next morning.
My parents were rich—multimillionaires to be exact. My dad had been an investment banker and my mum a corporate tax lawyer before they set up their own investment firm with a staff of a hundred, and they’d never spoilt us, but my older sister and I had grown up far more privileged than a lot of people. Still, never in my life had I dreamed I’d travel on aprivate fucking plane.
The lingering jetlag and tired grouchiness from having to wake up too early to catch our flight had vanished the moment the cabin crew led Esmeralda, Shehryar, and I onto the plane. I’d shamelessly gaped at the sleek, cream and brown interior that had a long seating area, two bedrooms, a bathroom big enough to swing a cat in, and a fucking dressing room.
I swore I found inner peace when I sat down on the spacious window seat I claimed. And the breakfast had practically been the same as what we’d had in Jahmal Palace.
In the two hours that had passed of our three-and-a-half-hour flight, Esmeralda and I watched a movie and chatted, while the dickhead plugged his headphones in for a bit before sticking his head in his laptop.
He’d been ignoring me since we butted heads in the gym, though I wasn’t complaining because I was ignoring him too. Plus, everything was so much more fun when he wasn’t getting in my way.
But in the last twenty minutes I’d been reading, the nervous energy zipping off Esmeralda was beginning to suck the fun out of the trip before it had even started.
“Are you sure it wasn’t wrong of me to tell him I wasn’t going to make his birthday?”
I paused mid-sentence on the page, closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again.
That was the tenth or so time she’d asked in the last hour. I’d been close to strangling her the fifth time I reassured her. Now she was just taking the piss.
“It wouldn’t be a surprise if he knew you were coming, would it?” I said.
“But he was really upset on the phone.” The regret in her quiet voice struck a guilty chord in me. I couldn’t be mad at my beautiful girl, not when she herself was feeling guilty about lying to her boyfriend.
Esmeralda and Kai had been planning her trip to Touma for his birthday since practically the day she left after the Peace Celebrations in February nine months ago. Though it was only in May the trip became an official thing and the two of them extended an invite to me too.
But two weeks ago, Esmeralda rang me and told me that Prince Arsh, Kai’s uncle and younger brother to the King of Touma, had asked her to tell Kai she couldn’t come until after his birthday so they could surprise him on the morning of his birthday with her arrival. She’d done it, and then bawled her eyes out to me on the phone immediately after because Kai had apparently sounded“so upset it was heartbreaking,”and she hated herself for doing that to him.
With a sigh, I closed my book, keeping a pair of fingers between to mark my page, and twisted on the leather seat to face her. “You have nothing to worry about, my beautiful Ezzy. Because when Kai sees you there, he’ll be so happy that he’ll completely forget why he was upset in the first place.” I lifted a brow, smirking. “Plus, I’m sure there areother waysyou could convince him not to be upset with you too. You know, like—ahem—suitcase. Ya get what I’m saying, Princess?” I winked.
Esmeralda’s face turned tomato red in understanding.
“I didn’t need to hear that.”
The deep grumble dragged both mine and Esmeralda’s attention across the aisle to the other side of the plane where Shehryar was sitting in the seat facing us, scrolling on his laptop. Honestly speaking, I had genuinely forgotten about his annoying presence for a moment. I preferred it that way. Because at least then there wasn’t a constant angry buzz in my blood.
