Page 4 of Tall, Royal Hater
Like a wounded animal, I protected myself in the only way I knew how.By lashing out in fury.
I fell back a step and threw my head up to the sky and laughed. I hated how the high-pitched sound cracked at the end, but that only fanned my anger more. “If you think that I was throwing myself at you, then you’ve clearly never had someone actually do so. Which would be shocking if you weren’t such a self-centred prick. So, I suppose in that case, you deserve the lack of attention. Not that there’s much worth paying attention to in the first place.”
His eyes spat fire, and his anger was sweet against the bitter pain in my chest. I waved my hand carelessly between us. “I’ll admit. I may have been curious about what you were hidingunder those clothes.” I let my gaze slip down. “Can’t blame a girl for thinking you might have had a big dick.” I snapped my gaze back up. “But now it’sveryclear that you radiate small dick energy, and I have no interest in a mediocre lay.”
Shehryar huffed a cruel sound, though his expression only changed with a slight lift of his brows. “Your assumption that I’dwantto take you to bed is astounding.”
“Not as astounding as your assumption that I give two shits about what you think of me.”
“That’s hardly surprising.” He cocked his head as he pushed his hands into his coat pockets. “What rich, spoilt little girl cares about anything other than herself?”
A renewed stab of hurt flashed through me, causing my tongue to swell and my ears to ring. “Ah, so this is a complex thing.” I forced out a stiff chuckle. “Poor boy with no dad needs to criticise the rich girl to make himself feel better. That makes a lot more sense.”
A deadly aura fell over Shehryar as his expression turned cold and murderous. A hard jolt of fear made me realise I had crossed a line, though it didn’t quite dampen my ire and hurt. I was beyond the point of any regret and apologies. At least, right then I was.
“You’re Esmeralda’s friend,” he growled, so low and slow, after a long, tense minute. “But bring up my dad again…” He moved towards me, closing me in against the railing, and it was a mission and a half not to shrink back against it. “And I’ll make your lifefucking miserable.” A pulse of alarm pounded through my chest. “I suggest from now on you stay out of my way, Mariyah.”
“Finally,” I managed to bite out, hating how he’d turned me mute for an instant. “Something we can agree on. Glad we had this heart-to-heart to fixyourdumbass misunderstanding.”
I shoved him away and charged back in the direction of the restaurant. But the moment my back was to him, the frustrated tears pooled in my eyes. Twisted pain and embarrassment blazed inside me.
Fuck him.Fuck you, Shehryar.The stupid fucking dickhead.
I was done with him.
My stupid crush was fucking over.
Chapter 1
Mariyah
Five years later
My best friend was a traitorous bitch.
Five years we’d been as tight as the world’s most perfect book binding, and the girl had failed to tell me about the biggest secret she’d been hiding.
“Dude,” I whispered, shooting heart-eyes over my shoulder as we rounded the corner from the dining hall. “You never told me Kareem was so freaking sexy.”
She’d had plenty of opportunities to tell me. Fine, the majority of the times we’d spoken about him, very few good things had been said. But things had changed, so what bloody stopped her from telling me since?
Esmeralda’s lips were pulled up in utter disgust when I brought my attention back to her.
“Like, I mean, I’ve seen him in pictures, butwhoo…” I faked a slight swoon, taking pleasure in her revulsion. “When he walked into the dining hall and smiled at me, I nearly fucking melted in a puddle. And his hand! It was so big and rough around mine. It made me think—”
“Mariy—stop. That’s disgusting,” she said, and the livelier one of the two rottweiler puppies, about four months old, following at our feet, yapped in agreement. “He’s my brother!”
“I know.” I wiggled my brows. “But he’s not mine.”
She widened her pretty eyes at me. “Stop.”
“Wait, wait, I’ve got one more.”
“No!” She picked up her pace, and I chased after her, snickering maniacally.
We stumbled into each other down the next corridor, laughing as Esmeralda swatted me away, and I clung to her. But we abandoned the topic of her brother’s hotness as she started distracting me with the history spread over the walls of her home and showed me what I hadn’t seen because of the long nap I had taken after my early morning flight in.
Jahmal Palace, the main residence of my best friend, Crown Princess Esmeralda Ayla of Jahandar, and her older brother,King Kareem, was the epitome of Jahandari architecture. Every inch of it was made of white, sparkling marble that had been standing tall and elegant for hundreds of years. Spotless rose-red rugs lay through the centre of all the corridors and most rooms. The ceilings were high and covered in intricate patterns that had been chiselled into the stone, with bright gold chandeliers hanging everywhere. And there were more paintings, knight’s chainmail, swords, and historical ornaments lining the walls than I had ever seen in any museum or art gallery in my life.
