Page 50 of Tall, Royal Hater
“And you would have deserved it,” I hissed through my teeth.
The crevice between his brows deepened. With an abrupt step back, he tugged me from the door, yanking me to his right as he turned. My fist was in front of his torso, and before I could catch my balance and tear myself back, he grabbed the pen and threw it across the room.
“You fucking—get off me!” I clawed at his wrist with my other hand, trying to twist myself free.
But his iron grip was just as hard as his stare. “Be quiet,” he growled.
“Why?” I squared up to him. “Because you don’t want everyone to know you’re a fucking bastard?”
“Calm down, Mariyah.”
“Don’t fucking tell me to calm down,” I roared and shoved at his wide-arse chest. It was like trying to tumble a brick wall with a plastic toy bat instead of a sledgehammer. I did more damage to my palms and wrist in his grip than I did to him.
Shehryar didn’t even flinch. He just stared down at me for a quiet second. Then he turned and, with easy steps, dragged me past the sofas towards one of the desks in front of the windows.
I struggled and dragged my weight back, but it made no difference. “Shehryar! Let go.”
He swung me around just before the desk to stand in front of him, keeping hold of my wrist. Chest heaving, I glared daggers up at him. He glared back stern and frustrated, but there was an underlying calm to his posture that hadn’t been there when he’d thrown insult after insult at me.
I didn’t fucking care. I jerked my knee up, aiming for his groin.
His mouth winced, anticipating the impact, but his right hand shot down with stupid speed. He shoved my knee back forcefully. “Stop it, Mariyah.”
I ignored him and looked for another opening.His ear.
Misdirecting him by jostling my trapped wrist, I lifted my other hand to his right ear. He realised my trajectory quickly and grabbed hold of my wrist, but I was quicker.
I latched onto his ear and gave it a hard twist.
He grunted and dropped his head towards my hand, trying to ease the discomfort flaring in his angry expression. “Let go.”
Gritting my teeth in a satisfied sneer, I rolled my fingers, watching his ear turn white. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel good after how he’d hurt me. It expelled a lot of the angry heat inside me.
“Mariyah!”
“You fucking dickhead,” I snarled.
His narrow eyes flashed. With a vicious grip on my wrists, he growled from deep within his throat. “That’s enough!” He rippedmy hand off and, in my attempt to claw for purchase, I was sure I scratched the back of his ear.Good!
The bright beacon of red painting his ear remained at the corner of my vision as I fought his grip and he grappled for control. We grunted and shoved and pulled, neither of us relenting, both of us refusing to submit to the other.
“For fuck’s sake. Mariyah!”
I was blinded by perverse satisfaction when he let go of my left wrist, but the flash of bright white only lasted a second.
Shehryar practically threw my other wrist, transferring the grip around it from his left hand to his right and the force had me fighting the pull of a spin. But I failed when he pushed up behind me, grabbed my other wrist from around my side, and tripped me with his demanding step forward.
The front of my thighs met the edge of the desk, and Shehryar’s heavy weight bore down against my back. I doubled over with a gasp, gravity threatening to slam my face into the wood. I wasn’t sure whether my hands moved on their own or if they were encouraged by Shehryar’s ones locked above them, but I slammed them down on the wooden surface, bracing myself.
The silence that followed was loud. Thrummed in my ears.
My chest heaved on every panting breath. I was shaking down to my bones. My hair was sprawled all around my shoulders and neck, obscuring some of my vision, and I…it took my nerves a while to fully register what kind of position I was in.
Shehryar was all over me. Squeezing all around me.
His hot, hard chest, swelling and deflating with his heavy breaths, was flush against my back. His bull-sized shoulders swathed mine, and his tree-trunk arms made mine look dainty as they mimicked my positioning. The slight weight of his face was against the side of mine. And as I blinked at his shiftingfingers around my wrists, I catalogued the press of his lower half and stilled.
My legs were slightly spread, my heels tittering up and down from the edge of the rug. His long, muscular legs were situated between, and my arse…
