Page 3 of Tall, Royal and Grumpy

ESMERALDA

Kai shoved me hard against the wall with a harsh grunt, pressing my cheek to the cold stone as he trapped my forearms against my back with one large hand of his.

I struggled in frustration, but it was fruitless as he pressed his front against my back, pinning me between the stone wall and his muscular frame. His hand in my hair. His breath heavy in my ear.

“Baby girl,” he snarled. “Just because I’m being kind and giving you time to get used to me, doesn’t mean you can forget I always get what I want. Whenever I want it. However I want it.” He pushed a thigh between my trembling legs, and I arched against him with as much hatred as there was lust in my glare. “And there is nothing stopping me from taking you right now.”

My eyes widened, but I didn’t struggle. I just spread my thighs to accommodate him.

He smirked down at me. “You want me too, baby girl. I know you do.” He dipped his face into the crook of my neck, letting out a deep, arrogant chuckle as I shook my head. “Yeah, you do, love. I can smell your arousal dripping down your thighs. Now all you’ve got to do is keep those pretty legs spread for me so I can taste it.”

“Sorry, but how can this guy smell her arousal if he’s not actually between her legs?”

My fantasy vanished before my eyes—again—as my best friend’s voice yanked away the hazy state blanketing my mind. Exasperation threw a tantrum inside me, and my head snapped around to the girl curled up in the other corner of the velvet settee.

“Mariyah,” I half snapped, half whined.

Mariyah stopped fiddling with the loose bun of dirty blond hair atop her head, her sky-blue eyes appearing grey in the dim lighting of the living room as they flicked to me. “What?” she said with a shrug. “It’s true though. Unless this girl’s smelling fishy, why can he smell it from so far away?”

A growled chuckle rumbled from my mouth. “I don’t know. It’s a movie, anything is possible. Now would you please just let me…let me concentrate?”

The whole north-south magnet, opposites attract thing? That was mine and Mariyah’s friendship. Literally and metaphorically.

She was tall, I was short. She had straight blonde hair; mine was waves of chocolate-brown. She had a big arse, I had the big boobs. I liked to watch movies in silence, and she liked to do a full-on commentary as if it was a football game or something.

I just wanted to imagine my own version of the movie-adaption of the mafia romance book we both liked and were watching on the last night I was staying with Mariyah at her parent’s house. But I should’ve known that was going to be an impossibility with her inability to keep all her intrusive comments to herself.

“You’re trying to concentrate?” Mariyah asked in confusion before her brows shot up to her hairline. A blush crept onto my cheeks as she threw her head back and laughed loudly. “Oh, you’re doing it again, aren’t you?”

“If you know, then shut up.”

I got two minutes of silence before Mariyah snorted. “I’m just trying to imagine it but I really can’t.” She snickered. “Orange would never. He could never!”

She chuckled harder as she unfurled her legs, all long limbs and a curvaceous figure clad in a skin-tight T-shirt and leggings despite it being a cold early February night outside. Then she lifted her hands and curled her fingers into circles, holding them apart in front of my face.

“Look, this is your Orange.” She shook one hand. “And this is a mean, dirty-talking Dom like our mafia don, Javier over here, okay?” She shook her other hand towards the TV screen opposite us. “Can you see the two circles do not touch or overlap? That is because the two are mutually exclusive and could never align into one person.” She chuckled, dropping herself back against the armrest. “There is no point trying to imagine your sweet, charming Prince Orange as Javier.”

I knew she was right, but I still twisted my mouth to the side. “You don’t know that,” I said, not exactly sounding convinced myself. “He might be a secret Dom.”

Mariyah scoffed with eyes full of disbelief. “Oh, come on, Ez. He’s a prince—”

I lurched forward, scrambling to clamp my hand over her mouth. “Shh! Shehryar’s upstairs!”

Mariyah’s parents had been away on government business for the whole week I’d come to celebrate my twenty-third birthday with her in the State of Raven. It was the first time I’d been back to see her since we graduated from university more than a year ago. She was the only friend I’d made in my three years studying economics in Raven, and I loved her to bits.

Obviously, with me being the Crown Princess of the State of Jahandar, I hadn’t been allowed to come and stay with her alone. My private secretary-slash-bodyguard, Shehryar, who was also the closest thing I had to a real brother, was upstairs in the second guest room.

He was unlikely to hear anything, but I never knew with him. Shehryar had the hearing of a bat, the sixth sense of a shark, and the sight of an eagle, and I didn’t need him asking me questions about my prince crush who Mariyah had nicknamed, Orange.

She softly pulled my hand off and carried on in a quieter voice as if she’d never been interrupted in the first place. “And not just any prince, Ez. He’s the one the world calls, The Perfect Prince. And a man who outshines even a fairy tale prince cannot be a Dom.”

“I know.” I huffed and slumped back against the sofa. “But Dom or not, it doesn’t even matter.”

“Yeah, for it to matter, you would actually have to talk your way into his bed, instead of just pining over him silently from across the room.”

I gaped at Mariyah as she giggled like a triumphant little bitch, and without thinking, I grabbed the cushion between us and whacked her with it. So much for proper princess behaviour.

“That wasn’t funny,” I said, but annoyed laughter laced my words. “I’m trying, okay.”

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