Page 136 of Tall, Royal Hater
I shot back in my chair and jerked my chin out from the grasp of his hand. Shehryar blinked at me, brows furrowing in question, but I gritted my teeth and sat straight.
“Esmeralda and Kai are on their way, right?” I said, picking up the black leather straps of my handbag. “Let’s meet them halfway.”
“Wait.” I could feel his eyes tracking my movement as I stood up, the brown bag of tea in my hand. “Mariyah—”
I stopped and forced myself to smirk. “Thanks for the pep talk, by the way. Guess we’re even now.”
He called my name again as his chair scraped the cobblestone ground, but I was already walking away from him.
I wasn’t running. I wasn’t being a coward.
It was called self-preservation. Self-respect.
Because five years ago, I thought we were having a moment.
But he turned around and humiliated me viciously.
I’d learnt my lesson then, and no matter what it felt like now, I wasn’t going to put myself in a situation where he had the chance to hurt me again.
“Fuck,” Shehryar groaned hoarsely in my ear as he rolled his sweaty, sated body off my back, slipping his flagging cock out of me. “Are you okay?”
I panted as I flopped onto my spine on his bed and nodded. “Fine.”
“Would you like a bath or—”
“Just a washcloth,” I said, pushing myself upright. “I want to get back to my room.”
His brows knotted. “Why? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I scanned the mess of clothes we’d left on his bedroom floor as we’d undressed each other upon returning to the palace, accounting for everything I needed to grab before I left. “I need to shower and wash my makeup off, and I’m tired, Shehryar. We were out all day today, and I barely got any sleep last night either.”
“You can shower and sleep here,” he said, climbing off the edge of the bed.
“I’d rather do that in my own space.”
“Our rooms are the same.” He disappeared into the bathroom.
“My room has my stuff in it.”
Less than a minute later, he came back out in his full, confident male glory, a damp towel in his hand, and my chest and sore pussy clenched in sync.
This is the last time, I reminded myself of what I’d decided before he fucked me.This is the last time you have sex or deep conversations with him. No more after you leave this room.
“I can get whatever you need from your room,” he said, walking back over.
My stomach joined in in the game ofclench-so-hard-it-ached-so-good. “No thanks,” I said.
Shehryar folded one hairy leg as he sat down by my hip. He stared me right in the eyes as he pushed my sticky thighs apart. “I’m asking you to stay the night, Mariyah.”
“I know. But can you just fucking stop? You’re confusing me, dickhead!”was what I wanted to yell at him. Instead, I tugged at the towel in his hand. “And I’m telling you I don’t want to.”
For a second, the jaws of guilt clamped around my rib cage as a flicker of something uncertain darted through his eyes. But then his lips set firm. “Fine,” he said. “But I’m still wiping you down.”
It was a compromise I wanted to fight, but I bit my tongue and let go of the cloth.
The quicker he wiped me down, the faster I would have been able to leave and put this all behind me.
I’d go back to hating Shehryar, and it would be as if nothing had ever changed.
