Page 29 of Tall, Royal Hater
After all, it was only fair we both pushed each other to the limit.
Though, right then, I wasn’t trying to elongate our game of push-and-shove-back-harder. Still, I didn’t exactly tame the smirk that tucked into my cheek.
“Are you going to behave?” My tone touched the line of mocking.
She jerked forward. “Fuck you, dickhead.”
My satisfaction bloomed heavier and hotter. “You’re a fucking menace, do you know that?” I growled, but I swore there was some sick sort of amusement in my voice.
A breath of swollen silence fell between us before I shook my head. “I’m not going to let you ruin my relationship with Esmeralda, work or otherwise, and I doubt you want to ruin your friendship with her. But keep acting the way you do with me, and she will pick up on it even more than she already has, which is only going to put her in an uncomfortable position. And she doesn’t deserve that. Especially not now when she wants to enjoy her time with Prince Kai and include us too.”
“I said that yesterday,” she hissed, “but you didn’t agree with me, did you?”
“Well, staying out of each other’s way didn’t exactly work out, did it, whenyouinsisted we share a car.” I dropped the accusation from my brows. “The only other way this is going to work is if you stop acting like a spoiled brat, so we can be civil enough in front of Esmeralda.” Her lips parted, but I spoke before she could. “So, are you going to stop giving me unnecessary attitude and behave?”
With a clenched jaw, she swung around and charged the other way to get around me. I reacted quicker, slamming my hand to the car and blocking her in entirely.
“Shehryar!”
My smirk stretched wider but tightened too. I was losing my patience, and Esmeralda was going to grow suspicious if we took any longer. “Last chance, Mariyah. Will you or will you not behave?”
“Okay, fine,” she snapped, malice shooting from her every cell. “Now move.”
She rammed against my arm, and I let her through, adjusting my stance as she got into the car—in the correct seat—and slammed the door shut.
Fucking brat. She didn’t even care that it was someone else’s car and needed to be careful.
I should’ve dragged her out and made her get in again properly. But as the ringing from the slammed door stopped vibrating through me, I was distracted by my hyperawareness of something else.
I had two heartbeats pounding through my body in sync.
One coming from my chest.
The other far,farlower.
And I hated Mariyah for it. For pushing all my wrong buttons purposely.
And unknowingly, pushing all the right ones too.
Chapter 8
Mariyah
Iavoided Shehryar like he was the Black Death Plague of the fourth century all through our self-guided tour of the Lyle National Art Gallery, even when Esmeralda and Kai walked off together. I sat myself in the seat next to Esmeralda too at lunch in the small, high-end restaurant Kai had booked out entirely, so I didn’t have to sit next to him. I didn’t interact with him once. Not a single glance.
I successfully kept it up all the way until we arrived at the gorgeous four-storey manor house of the last Duchess of Coparre that had been turned into a museum by Touma’sNational Heritage Board. Only then did I manage to bring myself to pierce holes irately into the back of his head.
That was how long it took me to calm down enough to be able to look at Shehryar for longer than a second without wanting to attack him with claws and canines.
That was how fucking livid I’d been for hours. Livid wasn’t even a strong enough word for the shaking, hot and cold, spitting, biting, boiling feeling that flooded through me.
How dare he!Who the fuck did he think he was? The dickhead pinned me against the car and bloody threatened me! And—and then he’d treated me like a fucking child, telling me to behave. The fucking audacity!
There had been something so sinister about his almost calm expression and voice that spread goosebumps all over my skin. I hated how it had made me feel. The way I felt small and feeble trapped by his superhuman strength and the way his dark growls rumbled in my chest. I hated that they’d battered my stubborn nature until I’d given in despite the resistance of my anger.
Most of all, I hated myself. Because despite having despised every second of that interaction, I climbed into the car and sat next to Shehryar in silence with a liquid throb between my legs.
I shouldn’t have felt it. The ache shouldn’t have existed when I despised him. But it did, and it dragged me round and round in anger and hatred directed at him and myself. And those constant circles were what made it ten times harder to calm down.
