Page 63 of Tall, Royal Hater
I stayed still and silent as his muted steps faded away. But Mariyah didn’t.Couldn’t.
Her nerves presented themselves as frustration as her arched brows puckered together, and she crossed her arms and cocked her hip. “What?” she snapped.
My lashes dipped as I watched the way her movement pulled at the brown, paper-thin silk, exposing her long, curvy leg between the slit—it slid up high on her upper thigh, leaving little to the imagination. And the way it moved against her skin like water with her every step… The dress was simple, but that teasing, infuriating dance of the fabric around her figure could start and end wars.
I hadn’t missed that her dress matched Pierre’s outfit. They’d looked like a couple when they’d walked in together with coordinated grins and clothes. Had they planned it?
The reminder intensified the concentration of dark, cruel smoke filling my lungs.
I didn’t choke on it.I thrived off it.I wanted to cage her in it. In me.
My craving for the high of arguing with her was making my teeth ache. There was no going anywhere until I’d sated the feeling. But the longer I stared at her, the more I became aware that the smoke was climbing down the threads tethered around my dick.
“If you’re not going to say anything, then I’m going,” she declared.
The corner of my mouth twitched, and she must’ve seen it because she stilled.
It would have been sofuckingeasy to wipe the audacious look off her pretty face.
It’d take little strength to pin her to the wall by her slim throat and shove my hand between the slit of her dress to torture her warm, bratty pussy.
Not by edging her, no—that would be kindness she didn’t deserve.
I’d make her come over and over until she learned the torture of too many orgasms was far more wicked than denial or edging. Her body would be too weak to escape and her mind a dizzy mess.
She’d beg me to let her go when I was done with her.
I should’ve stepped back when my brain formulated the aggressively sexual thought. I’d spent the last five years doing exactly that, turning away whenever Mariyah’s menacing behaviour had pushed my desire to tame and tie up to the limit. I had always reminded myself she was Esmeralda’s best friend, that I couldn’t mess things up or ruin that friendship for her.
But right then, I found I no longer cared about stepping back or respecting that boundary.
“Fine, bye,” Mariyah said and uncoiled her arms, strutting with the aim to leave the way Fay had.
Before she could pass me, I stepped in front of her. She immediately stopped and leaned back, but my hand shot out as she opened her mouth to complain.
I clamped my palm around the back of her neck, strands of her straight hair catching between my fingers. Squeezing tightly, I moved towards the corridor she and Fay had been in moments ago and dragged her around with me.
She gasped as she staggered in her heels but immediately started struggling, clawing at my wrist with one hand. “What the fuck are you doing? Get off me!”
I continued walking as if I couldn’t feel anything.
Mariyah grabbed hold of my wrist with both hands and spun anticlockwise, trying to twist away and bend my arm backwards at the same time. Her effort was kind of cute—it was like she’d forgotten I’d trained to kill with my bare hands in the Armed Forces.
A growled sound that could’ve passed as a cruel chuckle rumbled from my throat. I flexed the muscles in my arm and rotated with her. She stumbled, having not expected the abrupt slack of tension between us, and one hand released my wrist to grasp onto air. I took advantage of her imbalance, pressing my forearm across the top of her torso at the very base of her neck and shoved. I cupped the back of her hair with my other hand just before she slammed into the wall I’d been walking closest to five seconds prior. I followed her and pushed myself flush against her.
Dull pain echoed through my knuckles as they cracked between the solid wall and her head, but I barely noticed it over the loud battering of my heart.
Mariyah grunted angrily as she flipped her bangs out of her eyes to glare at me. “Get off me,” she hissed, trying to push at my arm with the hand that was still wrapped around it. I didn’t budge.
“You have some nerve,” I growled, baring my teeth, “getting angry at me and trying to play the victim when I’m the one who just found out what you were trying to do behind my back.”
She jerked her shoulder roughly. “What do you mean‘playing the victim’? You’re the one who insulted me,notthe other way around.”
“And I tried to apologise, but you refused to listen.” I shook my head slowly. “Too late now. I’m not the one who needs to apologise anymore. You do—to me.”
Her eyes widened in stupefied amusement. “Apologise to you for what?”
“How many more people have you spoken to about the wedding but told them not to mention anything to me?”
