Page 67 of Tall, Royal Hater
I fucking called him Daddy.Why? And he liked it. I liked it! And it—I—fuck…
Confusion jumbled with anger and seasoned heavily with desire made for an agonising mix. I didn’t like it. I wanted to extract the sensation and bury it a hundred feet under, never to be seen and heard of again. I hated that it made me feel agitated, and I hated Shehryar for making me feel like this.
I wanted to forget it had ever happened and go back to the time when anger and distaste were the only things Shehryar and I shared. Not almost kisses or ravenous stares.
I wanted to go back to when my random bouts of desire for him were in the lonely, dark depths of the night, and I woke up sure as fuck that I hated him to the moon and back thrice over.
Liar. You’re lying to yourself, Mariyah.
Even the taunts in my head were beginning to sound like him, and it made me want to scream. I was going to go mad at this rate. Knowing that he hated my guts but wanted to fuck me until I felt himinmy guts was doing nothing for my sanity. Nor for the constant ache between my legs.
“I hate him, Esmeralda,” I said aloud. “How many times do I have to tell you that?”
She arched a pretty brow. “Then what were you doing in the corridor?”
“What we always do—we were arguing. Because I told him I wasn’t going to help with the wedding until he apologised for being rude to me, but I still was and he found out, and I blamed him, but he was trying to make me apologise, and I refused to.”
Esmeralda’s brows lowered and lowered further through my quick monologue. “You…” she started but stopped, then shook her head like she was shaking off her bemusement. “Why?”
“Why what? Why did I refuse to apologise? Because he deserved it.”
“No, why was he rude to you?”
“Because he’s an idiot.”
“He’s not an idiot.”
I lifted my chin. “He is to me.”
“And you don’t provoke him?” She subjected me to that accusing mum stare of hers.
“This time it was unprovoked.”
“He would have apologised if it was unprovoked,” she said with certainty.
“Yeah, well, he tried to, but I preferred the idea of getting back at him.”
“Mariyah,” she said with a sigh, then shook her head. “If you two only took a second to stop fighting and getting back at each other, you would realise the potential there.”
I scoffed and rolled my eyes. “Yeah, that’s never going to happen.”
She scowled in disagreement or disappointment as we came to a stop at a red light but didn’t voice either. The car was quiet except for the woman talking on the radio in the background. But then—
“Shehryar is a good man,” Kai said calmly, flicking a quick glance at me through the rearview mirror.
Esmeralda dropped her head against the seat and laughed loudly as I gaped at her fiancé.He’d finally chosen to speak, andthatwas what he said?
I clapped my lips together and pointed at him. “Don’t you fucking start, TRG, or I swear—”
“Hey,” Esmeralda quickly said, aiming for stern, but she was still giggling. She placed a hand on Kai’s arm. “Leave him alone.” She grinned at him. “I love you, baby. And you’re right, Sher is a good man.” Kai tugged at his ear, smiling lovingly as she set her attention back on me. “You hear that, Mar?”
I growled up the ceiling, then jerked forward. Gripping both front seats, I looked between them. “Let me make something very clear to the both of you. There isnothinggoing on betweenme and Shehryar, nor will anythingeverhappen. Is that plain enough for you to understand now?”
In hindsight…I was pretty sure I jinxed myself.
Chapter 17
Mariyah
