Chapter 15
Shehryar
I slammed the empty glass in my hand down on the serving tray of the young girl standing before me. Her eyes widened as the tray wobbled on her palm. I reflexively grabbed one side as she grabbed the other. She blinked at me, slightly taken aback by my aggression.
Fuck. Shit.
“Apologies, it slipped,” I said, offering the staff member, whose face I recognised but name I’d forgotten, a stiff smile.
She returned my smile with a swallow. “It’s okay, Shehryar.” Fuck, she knew my name, and that made me feel worse.
It wasn’t her fault nor the glass’s that four hours into Prince Kai’s birthday party my social battery was dead, and I was fucking restless from the build-up of irritation in my nervous system.
The girl greeted me and left, and I shifted back against the wall again, trying and failing to find some comfort in the familiarity of the position.
Esmeralda had dragged me away multiple times, so had Prince Fay under the instructions of my mother, and even Gigi too. But each time they’d been distracted by someone else, I drifted back to the edges of the room where it was familiar and safe, and I felt the freest. And most like me.
Stuck amongst the crowd of celebrities, politicians, and royalty that I had little in common with, I’d pulled at my tie in discomfort so much that I had to redo it in the bathrooms twice. Not that it was all bad—some people were fine, but the moment someone asked who I was, the feeling of being out of place rose up strong.
That wasn’t, however, the reason my frustration was strung up so high.
That was down to the blonde-haired, curvaceous, menacing nymph dressed in brown silk, whose bright blue eyes I kept catching before she rolled them away like I was the fucking nuisance.
She was the bloody pest. A stubborn fucking brat who was driving me mad with her attitude and refusal to listen to my apology.
And her loud, shameless laugh. No matter where I was in the hall, I heard it clearly over every other sound. It grated at my bones in a way it never had before.
Every time I glared in the direction of the sound, she was messing around with Candy and Pierre—the two people in Kai’s friendship group who were just as loud and proud as her, if not more so. Though she didn’t have a problem laughing and conversing with anyone. In a room full of strangers, she managed to get on with almost everyone as if she’d known them for years.
Everyone except me. Though we were both the culprits of that problem. But it had never felt so apparent until now. For more than one reason.
“How did you end up against the wall again?” Esmeralda said, sliding into my vision from the side. Her face was a little flushed and her skin painted in a damp sheen from the exertion of dancing.
“I walked,” I said blandly. Her face fell, and my mouth rose.
“Ha-ha, that was so funny,” she said sarcastically and wrapped her hands around my arm. She tugged me forward. “Come on. Everyone is asking where you are and why you’re not dancing.”
I frowned and stood my ground against her pull. “My mother and you don’t count as everyone.”
“It’s not just me and Mama Katiya.” She lifted her chin. “Kareem and Prince Arsh asked.” My face fell that time, and her lips spread wide. “Mariyah was asking too.”
I narrowed my eyes at her singsong tone. “Why? So she can trip me up?”
Esmeralda chuckled. “Probably, but you can check with her when she comes back from the bathroom.” She pulled gently at my arm again. “Come on, Sher. Please.”
Unless it was to do with her safety, I found it virtually impossible to say no to Esmeralda. It didn’t help that she had glittery eyes that she could manipulate any way she wanted.
I let out a sigh and stepped away from the wall. “Five minutes, Esmeralda.”
“Okay,” she chimed. But it wasn’t “ okay, five minutes, ” it was “ okay, you’ll stay for as long as I want. ”
“Esmeralda,” I grumbled, but she ignored me as she led me towards the crowd of dancing people.
Dread set in my guts. Fuck.
I could stare down the barrel of a gun without flinching. I could beat a man half to death for stalking Esmeralda without a worry of the consequences. I could remember the steps of a simple waltz when she needed help practicing. But the idea of dancing to pop music scared me shitless.
I had never learned to move my six-foot-five frame smoothly enough to look like I was actually dancing rather than flailing around because a rat had climbed under my clothes.
“Don’t touch your tie,” Esmeralda warned as I lifted my hand to it.
I gritted my teeth over a frustrated growl and lowered my hand. But five twitching seconds later, it rose swiftly on its own accord again.
“Sher! You’re ruining it.”
I grabbed the neat knot just as she grabbed my wrist. We both pulled.
She stopped. I stopped. Her lips bunched into a shocked ‘o,’ and I looked down.
My once perfectly knotted tie was hanging loose, almost yanked entirely out from under my waistcoat.
Without lifting my head, I set a dead stare on Esmeralda. She pursed her lips together. “Apologies. That wasn’t…” Her mouth hitched a little. “I didn’t mean to do that…” A giggle slipped through.
I couldn’t help it, my lips curled too, but I sighed heavily upon raising my head.
“Just take it off.”
“I’ll go to the bathroom and fix it,” I said.
“Fine,” she said. “But be quick. I’ll be watching the clock.”
I nodded and advanced to the closest open exit on my left.
The air was cooler and lighter the moment I stepped out into the corridor. There were a few people scattered around, enjoying the relaxed atmosphere even with the music still booming in the hall, and there were several guards standing by all the exits and corridor openings.
Turning left would’ve taken me directly to the public toilets, but I turned right instead, heading for the private ones that were further inside the palace, so I had more time alone.
The guard blocking the corridor smirked at my dishevelled tie. “You okay?” he said with light amusement in his tone.
I smiled tiredly and shook my head. “Don’t ask.” He chuckled as I passed him.
My ears were grateful for the respite once the music turned into a distant but relatively decipherable rumble a few corridors down. My footsteps were muffled too by the plum-coloured rug rolled through the middle of all the dark wood corridors.
Maybe that was why the soft voices emanating from close by were more obvious.
Halting in my steps, I frowned and tilted my head to listen carefully.
It was a man and a woman.
Were they…no, they were talking too much to be fucking.
I moved closer, keeping my gait steady—it wasn’t as if I needed to sneak up on them.
A loud laugh bounced out from the corridor on the right just ahead, and I froze.
I’d recognise that menacing laugh anywhere.
Mariyah .
My frown tightened. What the fuck? Why is she out here?
A vicious hiss shot through my blood, and my hands curled at my sides.
Who the fuck was she with? Was it Pierre? Or Candy?
Teeth gnashed in my chest at the thought of her in a dark corner with one of them or someone else. It was anger, I told myself. Anger at her reckless behaviour when it could reflect badly on Esmeralda if someone who knew they were best friends caught her.
It had nothing to do with the fact her arse had been grinding against my lap yesterday, and the image of her doing that with another man made me want to tear his neck apart no matter who he was.
I moved quickly but silently closer. Fuck, she was going to hear it from me when I—
“Let’s keep it PG-13, Fay. But I am genuinely sorry you saw that.”
I slammed to an abrupt stop.
Fay? As in Prince Fay? Why the fuck is she with him?
Clenching my jaw, I edged towards the wall just before the turn into the corridor but stayed on the rug to keep my steps silent.
“Yeah, me too. Like I said, I’m scarred.” The shudder in the prince’s voice was obvious. “Moving swiftly on though, what kind of painting did you have in mind?”
“I don’t know. It’s up to you, I guess,” she said. “You could either do a live sketch while the ceremony is going on, or we can find a picture of them that you could replicate as a painting.”
Sketch? Painting? For what?
“I suppose if you want to give it to them as a wedding gift, you’ll want it ready beforehand, so replicating a picture might work best.”
“Like a close-up of them laughing together or something they could hang in Prince Arsh’s office. It doesn’t have to be massive, seeing how short notice this is.”
I scowled in confusion until I remembered something she’d said in the office the previous day.
She’d wanted Fay to paint a portrait of Mother and Prince Arsh for their wedding. That’s what she was talking to him about.
Wait…so was she still planning the wedding? After all that crap about not helping me until I’d apologised. She was doing it behind my back anyway. Why?
“Okay, I can do that,” Prince Fay said. “I definitely have a few smaller canvases lying around. I’ll show you around my studio tomorrow morning, and you can choose a size. Uncle Arsh usually comes in throughout the day though, so I’ll do it in the palace basement where I keep my extra pieces.”
“That sounds great,” Mariyah chimed. “I’ll talk to Queen Leila and Esmeralda about a recent picture of them and will try to get you that before the end of tomorrow. Will four-ish days be enough?”
“I don’t have much else going on, so yes, it’ll be enough.”
“Thank you, Fay.” There came a slight rustle of clothes.
“Don’t mention it, Mariyah. You’re the one who came for a holiday but took on the task of planning my uncle’s wedding anyway. I’m happy to help you in any way that I can.”
“Can you do me another favour then?”
“Name it.”
“If Shehryar approaches you, I asked you to do nothing. You don’t tell him shit about this. But if he asks you to do something similar, you ignore what he says and do what I said instead.”
My frown lifted, slow and realising.
Ah. So, that’s what she’s playing at.
Venomous annoyance licked through me, but dark amusement tugged at my lips.
Mariyah fucking Levine, you little—
“Why?” Prince Fay said. “Aren’t you supposed to be planning it together?”
“Yeah, but he pissed me off, and now I want him to suffer and come crawling back to me when he realises he can’t do it alone, so help a girl out here, Fay.”
“Okay, I guess,” he said through a chuckle. “But I’ll be honest, Mariyah. If he comes to me knowing the truth, I’m going to point my finger straight at you. I’d rather not risk it with a man whose fist is the size of my face.”
“Yeah, that’s fine. I can deal with the dickhead.” Shoes shifted against the wooden floor.
Wow…
The temptation to laugh as I gritted my teeth was beguiling.
The fucking menace had schemed well, I’d give her that. Making me feel guilty for what I’d said and demanding an apology, while she went behind my back and planned the wedding herself, telling everyone not to help me in case I tried to do it without her, so that I had no choice but to go back to her and grovel at her feet. Whether I’d apologised or not, she would have come out as the victor who put together the perfect wedding with or without me.
Oh, she was clever. Fucking devious to a fault. And amongst the swirl of furious emotions she’d unleashed, there was definitely some form of admiration there. She played me well.
Funnily enough, I wasn’t angry now that I knew what her game was. That wasn’t the right word for the clump of coiling feelings in my chest.
I was pissed, but she’d riled a dark recklessness that wanted to play her game to the point of her destruction. A beast, both hungry and bored, that was in the mood to torment before feasting.
It was dark. Cruel. Dirty. Vicious. It wanted payback. But it wanted her surrender too.
I was going to make her surrender.
Two options presented themselves to me.
I either played the game her way and let her do all the work while messing with her, then took the credit myself at the end. But that wouldn’t work. One, I didn’t want to ruin my mother’s wedding, and two, Mariyah wasn’t the quiet kind who’d simply accept defeat. She’d let everyone know that I’d fucked with her plans, and because they all loved her, they would side with her anyway.
So, the only other viable option was to confront her right there and then, and going off the violent thrum in my blood that was the only thing I wanted to do. I needed to fight it out with her.
“Isn’t he going to realise, though, eventually, that you’re—”
The man’s voice fled as the two of them rounded the corner and came to an abrupt stop a step and a half away from me. Mariyah’s eyes widened for a quick second before she schooled her reddening face into a disgusted scrunch. Prince Fay, on the other hand, couldn’t hide the shock marring his hazel eyes and the elegant features he’d inherited from his mother.
He was less than a year younger than me, and had we spent more time together, I could probably have considered him a friend. He worked hard both with his art and his duty to his people and was great to have interesting conversations with. But of course, Mariyah had forced him to stoop to her level.
“Shehryar…” The second prince cleared his throat. “This is…unexpected.”
“Your Highness,” I said, addressing him without taking my eyes off the bloody menace. “Please leave, now. I need to talk to Mariyah. Alone.”
“Uh…yeah. Yes, I think I will.” He pulled away, and she frowned after him. “See you both.”
“Coward,” she grumbled as he walked past me.
He glanced at her over his shoulder. “Like I said, fists the size of my face. Sorry, Mariyah.”
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 so fucking easy 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, not the 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?”
Stubbornness dulled the fire in her expression, but she lifted her chin. “Your point? It’s not as if you could’ve planned the wedding yourself anyway.”
“My point is,” I snarled, pressing my forearm heavily across her shoulders. “You made it out to my face that you wouldn’t help me until I’d apologised, yet that wasn’t the issue, was it? You only wanted to put me in a difficult position while you went behind my back and planned the wedding yourself and painted me as the bad guy. You were going to show me up in front of everyone just to satisfy your fucking hurt pride. Because revenge was more important to you than the wedding.”
She lurched against my arm. “Don’t you fucking dare try to turn this on me! I did my best to set aside how much I hate you to help you plan your mother’s wedding, but you’re the one who didn’t want to cooperate. You attacked me, Shehryar—for no reason. So, yeah, I wanted you to pay for it. I wanted you to apologise on your fucking knees, and I wanted you to struggle without my help. But I was never going to let you ruin your mother’s wedding.”
She lifted her mouth in a slow smirk, and it sent a dozen jabs of wrath through my middle. “But I sure as fuck wasn’t gonna let the opportunity for revenge go either. Plus, I got you out of my way, didn’t I, and it was perfect. Half the wedding is already planned or in the process of confirmation, and the cherry on top is that they all know you were horrible to me too.” She shrugged one shoulder lazily. “It was a win-win situation, really, whether you apologised or not.”
Fury crept over me like a tsunami, scorching my face and neck with splatters of burning water and blurring the edges of my vision. I could only focus on the cause and soon-to-be recipient of my messy emotions.
“It's not nice to be made to feel like an idiot, is it?” Mariyah said in my silence, angling her chin audaciously.
My fingers reflexively dug into the back of her head as the last steel beam of my control bent and cracked under the testing pressure she exerted on it. Her ocean-blue eyes ignited with reciprocating ire, but she didn’t struggle in my tightening hold. Nor when I bent a little closer.
“ You conniving. Little. Bitch ,” I growled.
Dark amusement danced in the flickering blaze of her stare as she spread one side of her mouth wider. “Is that supposed to be an insult?” she said, her voice a husky purr that latched onto the vertical thread laced in my core and tugged at it.
Her long, mascaraed lashes lowered as she tipped her chin higher. Pressing back and putting weight on my palm, she curved her spine and pushed herself closer against me.
There wasn’t room for air to pass between us. And I’d felt it before underneath my frustration, but I supposed I hadn’t properly acknowledge it until then.
The silk hid nothing of her. Even through the layers of my suit.
She might as well have been naked, that’s how clearly I could feel how soft and warm she was. And her peachy scent made it all the worse.
She was biteable. Squeezable. Perfectly pliant. I could feel the piercing in her bellybutton, and from the way her breasts flattened, I knew she wasn’t wearing a bra, but something covered her nipples.
I clenched my teeth hard over the throbbing ache that roared through my dick, but no amount of bracing could’ve prepared me for the bat she swung next.
Parting her smirking lips, she whispered, “Say it again, Daddy. I liked it.”
The ring of blood in my ears dissolved into nothing as my heart stopped for what felt like a whole minute. During that time, I wasn’t convinced I’d heard her properly, but the moment my heart restarted with a hard buck, shooting a burning sensation through my muscles, it settled in.
It settled down . So low, so quickly, pooling molten liquid in my groin.
She called me Daddy. She fucking called me Daddy.
Yes, I’d been called so before, but not outside of sex, nor had it ever spiked my blood with such an intense sense of perverse pleasure that I wanted to yank at her hair and demand she say it again.
I felt it through the apex of her thigh where it curved into her lower belly—the way my cock stirred and pushed into her, wanting freedom from behind my boxers and fly.
I saw the exact moment she felt it too. The way her lashes fluttered up over ballooning pupils. The slight part of her pink, supple lips. And the subtle contract of her stomach as she sucked in a breath.
“Is that what you need me to be?” I heard myself rasp eventually. “ Your Daddy ?” Her dilated eyes stilled. “Is that why you act like such a brat all the time?”
Defiant fire flashed across her cheeks, and I abruptly found myself stumbling back from her. Strands of blonde hair whipped across her neck where my hand was pulled from behind, but she quickly flicked it away with a snap of her head. She stood tall and fierce but flushed from the wall.
“You really are delusional, aren’t you?” she snarked, but her eyes dipped down to my half-erect dick twice like she couldn’t control the movement.
My mouth pulled up in one corner as I adjusted the crotch of my trousers. Maybe purposely. Maybe not. But it caught her attention again for a longer second, and my mouth spread wider. Sparks splattered out from her irises, but I knew it wasn’t directed solely at me.
Mariyah was affected. Felt hot and bothered because of me. And she hated it.
It felt brilliant for me, though.
“Delusional?” I asked, arching my brows. “How so? Isn’t that what you called me?”
She opened her mouth, faltered, and snapped her teeth together. I let out a low chuckle as I moved lazily closer to her. Her reaction was like something out of a cartoon; I could practically see the rise of red lava through her before it exploded out the top of her head.
Squaring up to me, she jabbed a finger into my sternum. “How about how many times you’ve called me a brat, huh?”
I edged closer despite the sharp press of her nail. “What about it? You are a brat.” She leaned back as I braced one hand against the wall by her head. “You’re a fucking menace, Mariyah.” And then the other, caging her in.
She smirked. “And yet here you are with your peanut dick hard because of me.”
The throbbing grew more insistent as my gaze trailed over the flushed plains of her face, lingering on her lips before jerking back up. I swore her eyes were more dilated than before. “Does that actually work?” I asked, my timbre low and husky. “Telling yourself my dick is a peanut to stop yourself from thinking about it?”
“You’re deflecting, Sheri,” she said, lightly tutting me.
Fuck, I hated that nickname. But even in that moment, that hate felt ridiculously good.
“So are you, Mariyah.” I tilted my head, glancing to her lips again. “Admit you think about my dick.”
She lifted her chin rebelliously. Or expectantly. “Admit you think about me .”
“About wringing your neck, yes, I do.” I’d dropped my head so close I could feel her sweet-smelling breath against my skin. My tongue snuck out, swiping across my bottom lip, trying to taste it. Her .
Her lashes dropped, and I felt the weight of her heated stare on my mouth. “At least we have that in common,” she said.
“Really?” I purred. “Because the way you’re looking at my mouth doesn’t suggest so.”
She snapped her stare up, arching her brows. “Just trying to figure out if I could shove a brick down your throat to choke you because your peanut phallus is clearly too small for the job.”
Never had the word phallus sounded so aggravating and sexy at the same time before.
A growled chuckle slipped between my teeth. “Fucking brat.”
She smiled viciously, but her voice was breathy. “And you’re a dickhead.”
The dark knot of desire, dominance, and anger pulled tight inside me in the silence that followed. It was conflicting, because I wanted to keep watching her as she struggled to fight her desire and hold on to her anger. But at the same time, I wanted to shove her down to her knees, wrap her hair around my fist, and ask if she still thought my dick was a peanut as she gagged on it.
“Mariyah—oh, woah. Okay.”
We both jumped upon hearing the new voice, and our heads snapped around.
Pierre stood in the opening of the corridor, his brows high in surprise, his ruby-red eyes dancing with amusement, and a smug smirk on his lips. “This doesn’t look like you need rescuing,” he said, laughter lacing his deep voice. “Did Prince Fay have it wrong?”
Mariyah braced both hands on my chest and shoved me back. I stumbled but caught myself easily as I dropped my arms to my sides. “He didn’t need to send you,” she said, strutting towards Pierre without a second glance back, but the croak in her voice hadn’t disappeared.
Pierre glanced sceptically at me, his gaze running down my body. His eyes stopped at the top of my legs and popped wide before flying up in gleeful question.
Realisation and embarrassment swarmed my cheeks as I awkwardly pulled one side of my suit jacket in front of my semi-hard-on.
He threw his head back and a loud laugh burst from him. “You sure you wanna leave?” he asked Mariyah, struggling with his laughter, as she wrapped her hands around his arm and tugged him around.
“Let’s go,” she said firmly.
He stumbled with her pull, leaning into her as he said, “Did I disturb—”
“Nothing,” I heard her spit, quietly but firmly. “You disturbed nothing.”
My teeth rubbed across each other as I scowled at the back of their forms disappearing around the corner. She must’ve said something else because Pierre’s laughter echoed again.
Standing there alone in the buzzing silence, I couldn’t figure out if I was more pissed with her bratty attitude, that I didn’t get to snuff it with my tongue.
Or that she chose to leave with Pierre and run from me.
Who was the fucking coward now?