Chapter 18
Mariyah
“ I would like to hold a small celebration this evening for your upcoming nuptials and for Kai and Princess Esmeralda’s engagement, seeing as circumstances have not yet allowed for such an event,” Candy announced once the fittings were completed.
Prince Arsh and Katiya had been more than happy with Candy’s offer until Esmeralda mentioned that Kareem was still at Chaukham Palace. At which point, King Rami and Queen Leila said they would be more than happy to host the celebration at the palace.
By the time the impromptu party was in full swing in the private dining hall three hours later, there were at least twenty-five additional family and friends of the Touman royal family scattered around, including Kai’s friend Trevor; Zain and Alisha hadn’t been able to make it. The staff who were still around in the palace joined the party too, so we saved the kitchen staff the hassle by ordering pizza to add to the food they’d already made. Now boxes, plates, glasses, and dishes sat empty on the two long wooden tables, and everyone was laughing and grooving away to Gary’s DJing.
After an hour of dancing, my skin was damp under the short black dress and white trainers I’d changed into. There hadn’t been time anyway, but I was glad I’d stuck to my favourite makeup combo—mascara, red lipstick, and nothing more.
Nevertheless, I carried on enjoying myself with Candy, Pierre, and Trevor as if I hadn’t a care in the world. I’d even gotten Kareem to join me several times too, though I’d since lost Esmeralda and Kai to the chairs tucked in the corner. I’d left my drink with them, so every so often I popped over to find that she was still cuddled up on his lap, and he was still giving her googly eyes.
“Are you just going to spend the rest of the night here?” I asked as I set my glass back on the mini round table tucked next to Kai’s chair along with their empty glasses too.
“Maybe,” Esmeralda said, lifting her head from Kai’s shoulder. “We’re quite comfortable here.”
“I can see that.” I eyed Kai’s hand, sitting on Esmeralda’s thigh just under the skirt of her green dress.
A burst of laughter flooded out my mouth when Kai quickly pulled his hand back and set it atop her dress. He dropped his gaze with an embarrassed frown, and Esmeralda glared at me, albeit laughingly. “Sit down with us or go back to the boys,” she said.
“I think I need to pop to the bathroom first, I’m fucking sweating so much,” I said, then pointed at them. “When I come back you and TRG better be on the dance floor again.”
The exhaustion and dread on Kai’s face were obvious, but he offered Esmeralda a weak smile when she looked to him for an answer. “For a few songs,” he offered.
“For a few songs,” she echoed in agreement and planted a heavy kiss on his cheek.
I pulled a mock face of disgust. “You two are so bloody mushy, it’s gross.” She giggled, cuddling into him, and he tugged at his ear shyly. I rolled my eyes, grinning. “Okay, see you in five then.”
“Mariyah.” I glanced back to see Esmeralda smirking impishly. Her eyes darted to her right quickly. “Sher has been watching you. Like watching you .”
Heat, completely unrelated to the temperature of the room, bit into my cheeks, but I ignored it and narrowed my eyes. “And? So? What do I do with that information, Ez?”
She arched her brow. “Do you really not care?”
“No,” I said and turned away, heading back towards Kai’s friends.
“Mar!” she called. I stuck my middle finger up in the air, and she laughed behind me.
I knew. I knew exactly where the dickhead was standing.
Close to the wall, by the staff door, on the side of where everyone was dancing.
I knew because I’d been doing everything to avoid him. Not just because of what Esmeralda and the other women had said in Kai’s car and Candy’s studio, but also because his gaze kept following me like a shadow. It was both infuriating and disconcerting, added a bothered undertone to how hot and sweaty I was feeling. I’d quickly grown fed up and challenged him in return with glares of my own.
He hadn’t stopped, though. So, I made a point of staying as far away from him as I could and stuck as close to Candy and Pierre as possible. I wasn’t entirely sure it was working though. His bloody stare kept growing heavier and unrelenting, which was irritating me all the more.
Candy winked at me when he saw me weaving back over to him. His blond, flowy hair was damp around his temples and nape, the top two buttons of his pale grey shirt were open, and he had long ago untucked it from his trousers and rolled up the sleeves.
“Where’s Pierre?” I said as I slipped my hand into his extended one.
“He went with Trevor to request more songs.”
I gasped as he spun me without warning. My back hit his chest, and his arm banded across my stomach where he still held my hand. Settling his other palm on my waist, he dropped his face to the side of mine. I angled back to give him a confused raise of my brow.
“He’s watching you,” he said so quietly the music almost carried his voice away.
I looked around, frowning. “Who—”
I fell right into his glowing stare the moment Candy whispered, “Shehryar.”
Just like that, all the air vanished from the huge room, and my lungs collapsed in on their emptiness. They refused to inflate, causing my ears to ring and my blood to pound hard through my chest.
I’d seen Shehryar livid before, but I’d never seen him look at me with such molten, ferocious depth in his penetrating irises that it felt like he was touching me with his stare. He stood tall and wide like he always did, his jumper gone and a loose T-shirt in its place, but he looked ten times bigger than usual. So much angrier. More commanding. More predatory. Meaner and vicious.
Dominating. Punishing. Sexy . So freaking annoyingly sexy.
The abrupt realisation of the direction of my thoughts sent me shoving myself around, giving Shehryar my back and facing Candy. But he was watching me closely too, his blue eyes searching my face and narrowing on something he’d seen.
“Do you like him?” Candy asked.
Anger burst through me. “No.”
“But he likes you.”
I’d been ready to fire off at another question, but when I clocked what he said, it threw me off. I fumbled over incoherent syllables for a second. “No—no, he doesn’t.”
Candy’s lips spread into a slow, irritated smirk. “It pisses me off to say it, but the both of you are bloody clueless.”
“Clueless about what?” I snapped, yanking my hand from his. “Why does everyone think they know better about me and him? We fucking hate each other, why is that so hard to understand?”
“Hate can be just as explosive as love.”
I shook my head, and while the movement was quick with frustration, it was small too, like I was denying the truth of his statement. “Fuck off, Candy.” I stepped past him, but he trapped me to him with an arm around my waist. “Candy—”
He pressed his other hand flat against the bare skin between my shoulder blades. “Apologies,” he whispered close to my ear. “You are right. I should take your word for it, especially considering I do not particularly like him anyway. But I value your friendship, Mariyah, so I will say this.”
He grazed his palm down to the middle of my back. “If that is how he looks at you while you’re in another man’s arms because he hates you, then I believe the people of Neves should start reevaluating their ideals of love and start searching for hate instead.”
A shiver rushed down my spine. I dared to look at him, but Candy wasn’t looking at me. He was staring straight ahead of us. Right at Shehryar.
I stilled. “You’re doing this on purpose…”
His mouth twitched. “Isn’t that why you wanted Pierre’s help? To mess with Shehryar? What does it matter if I help too?”
“Candy.” I meant to say it sternly, but it sounded confused and breathless and excited instead. Technically, that was what I had wanted. But when messing with Shehryar was in return messing with my head and emotions so badly, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to anymore. But at the same time…
Growing frustrated with myself, with him, with the whole fucking situation, I pushed against Candy’s chest. “Let go.” He loosened his arm, and I stepped back. “I’m going to the bathroom.”
I didn’t wait for his reply, and I didn’t stop when Pierre called out to me as he approached Candy with Trevor by his side. I charged through the crowd, heading between the two oak tables, and straight out the main entrance of the dining hall into the cooler, quieter corridor.
Without the noise buzzing loudly in my head, it was easier to breathe…but it was also easier to feel the throbbing ache between my legs, which wasn’t a result of Candy, as handsome as he was.
Feeling doubly frustrated when I realised I didn’t actually know where the closest bathroom or water closet was, I stepped in a circle, raking my hands through my tangled, sweat-damp hair. I remembered there was a water closet by the basement stairs and headed that way.
Washing the stickiness off my hands and face with cold water helped soothe some of the pent up emotions inside me, but it didn’t really change the reflection that stared back at me in the square mirror above the sink. My eyes were bright and glazed, and the heightened colour across my lightly freckled nose and cheeks didn’t seem like it was going to fade any time soon.
I looked ridiculously feverish. And not in the about to fall sick way.
But in the I wanna get railed way.
But not by anyone. Just by the idiot I didn’t fucking like.
The thought made my thighs clench. I growled in annoyance and squeezed my eyes shut. But shutting my eyes brought back the feeling of his hot, large proximity, his hardening cock pushing into my belly, and my lashes shot up in alarm.
I didn’t want to imagine that. I really fucking didn’t.
I just wanted this aggravating feeling to go away. I wanted to forget it ever existed.
I wanted him out of my system. I wanted to kiss him— kill! I meant kill him. No, fucking way did I—
A steady knock sounded at the door, snapping my head up.
“Fuck,” I hissed under my breath and quickly pressed the backs of my damp hands to my cheeks. Louder, I said, “Gimme a second,” then dragged my bangs off my forehead with my hands once more, adjusted the straight neckline of my black dress, and headed for the door.
I didn’t immediately see who knocked. Confused, I went between wondering if the palace was haunted or if the person had decided to head to another toilet.
A hand latched viciously around my wrist.
Gasping, I whirled around, ready to throw the punch of my life, but my fist stopped midway when I saw who it was.
Shehryar.
No. Yes . No! He was the last person I wanted to see right now. Not that the leap my heart took would have convinced anyone so, but I immediately found enough anger to match the fury flooding off him in thick, dark waves. I squared up to him as I lowered my fist to my side.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I hissed, yanking my wrist back, but all I did was pull his hand closer to my chest.
His nostrils flared. Without saying anything, he turned and pulled me with him.
“Shehryar!” I snapped, struggling and fighting him on a screaming, instinctual notion that this wasn’t a battle I was going to win or escape unscathed if I didn’t break free before he cornered me.
I didn’t free myself, and he dragged me around the corner and down two flights of stairs to the basement floor. It was only once we got down there that I managed to twist my sore wrist free, but I’d severely underestimated how quickly he could move for someone so bulky.
By the time I turned to run back up the stairs, he’d already encircled one tree-trunk arm around my waist. I shrieked his name in outrage, but he lifted me off the floor, walked me around, and dropped me on my feet again. I hardly had the chance to register the gold pattern painted on the red wall to the left of the banister before he spun me and shoved me back against it.
I battled his grip, but he held me firm, my hands pinned in his wrists on either side of my head. I panted for air, but so did he, our chests brushing on every heaving breath. He grunted when I clipped him in the shin with the front of my foot. But he kicked it apart from my other one and pressed his wide stance right between, our bodies writhing and rubbing together, torso against torso, until I grew breathless and tired and stopped fighting futilely.
“Get off me,” I tried to snap, but I was breathing too hard for it to sound like anything more than a hiss.
“Why?” he growled, his eyes dilated pools of icy flames. “Isn’t this what you wanted? A reaction from me?”
“Why the fuck would I want that?” I slapped back automatically despite the hiccup in my chest.
He held still for a second, then suddenly released me and stepped back.
I should’ve run immediately. A voice whirled like a warning siren begging me to get away.
But I didn’t. I didn’t want to. I wasn’t sure I could. Run or escape him.
I hadn’t realised how much I’d been relying on his strength to keep me upright until I slumped back against the wall, my knees wobbling. But refusing to appear weak or affected, I forced myself to stand tall and straight.
With one hand on his hip and the other scrubbing over his trimmed facial hair, he shook his head. When he lowered his hand, there was a venomous sneer on his mouth, but the smoky heat behind it made it seem more irritably amused than murderous.
“You really are such a fucking little menace, aren’t you?” he grated quietly.
His gravelly voice licked right over my pussy, and I hoped he didn’t notice the involuntary clench in my thighs. “Did you hit your head on the way down the stairs, or do you just enjoy spouting absolute bullshit all the time?”
He edged half a step closer. “Don’t you think it’s too late to act like you haven’t been desperately begging for my attention all day?”
A laugh burst from me, but it was more high-pitched than I would’ve liked it to sound. “Okay, it’s official. You really are fucking delusional if that’s what you think.”
He shook his head, and the slow, sure movement scattered cautious prickles all down my neck. “No, Mariyah. I’m not.” He dropped his hands from his hips. “You’ve been avoiding me, but you’ve also been watching me. You refused to acknowledge me unless you had to, but you’ve been doing everything possible to get my attention.” I didn’t realise properly that he’d moved closer until he pressed his palms to the wall by my head and lowered his face closer to mine. “Isn’t that what your whole act with Candy for the last three hours has been? A demand for my attention.”
I struggled to fill my lungs with air, but it smelt like him—warm, male, earthy with a hint of something clean and citrusy. It turned the wind-up key in my chest, bringing everything I was hiding closer to exploding open.
“You saw me having fun with Candy and assumed it was for your attention?” Tipping my face higher, I raised my brows. “Is this some dumbass roundabout way of telling me you were jealous?”
“I don’t need to be roundabout about it, Mariyah.” He leaned back, but it didn’t feel like he’d moved at all. “I was jealous, and I’m still burning with jealousy. It’s eating out my fucking insides.”
His admission shouldn’t have made my belly jump as high as it did. But then it dropped so low between my legs, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to scream in frustration or moan in excitement.
“But that’s not the issue here.” He angled his head, his lashes dipping for a breath. “The issue is why are you so desperately trying to make me jealous?” His voice grew deeper and darker and thicker with every angry word. “Why were you shaking your arse against another man’s lap when really you wished it was mine? And now that you finally have my attention, why are you still mouthing off like a fucking brat?” He smirked slowly. “Are you that upset that we were interrupted yesterday?”
It took me a moment to unglue my swollen tongue from the roof of my mouth. “You have a bad habit of projecting your own delusions on other people.”
He tutted me and shook his head.
Fire singed my cheeks. I felt like I was twelve and being told off or mocked, and I hated it. I wanted to scream in his face, but that would’ve just proved his point.
“You’re being a brat because you didn’t get what you wanted,” he said, so gallingly sure of himself, and despite the anger it lit up, the molten ache between my legs throbbed harder. “You called me Daddy, but I didn’t get the chance to follow through and that left you feeling angry and frustrated. So, you’ve been going out of your way to piss me off in hopes that I won’t leave you wet and wanting today. Isn’t that right?”
Lies. Lies. It’s a lie. A fucking lie.
But the chant of denial in my head was a whisper in comparison to the truth that bloomed in blotchy, red patches all over my skin. My lungs constricted and inflated on a roar at the same time. I wanted to fight him, but I wanted to pull him closer. I wanted to run, but my swollen cunt wanted me to strip down and let him ruin me with his hands, mouth, and dick right there in the corridor by the stairs anyone could come down.
I hated it. I wanted it. I loathed it. I craved it.
The aching mix of hate and lust. Being roughened up by him. Pinned by his strength even as I struggled. Telling myself I wasn’t going to give in, so we could pretend he was forcing me to.
It was depraved. I knew it. But hate emulsified with lust did that. It brought out the kind of wicked, animal side in two people that had them using teeth and claws to bring each other pleasure while hissing hateful words into kissing mouths.
If he chased me and held me down, maybe I would’ve let him. But right then, the combination of rebellious ire and pride refused to allow him to win. And I leaned back on both with all my weight.
“See what I mean,” I said, just about keeping an even tone though my timbre had thickened. “You’re fucking delusional, and it’s getting out of hand. You should really speak to someone about it.”
His hot gaze travelled my face before one corner of his lips rose. “You’re a bad liar, Mariyah.”
“No, you wish I was lying, Sheri.”
“You are. Ask me how I know.”
I remained silent, refusing to.
He pushed himself back, his smirk lifting higher. “Your blue irises don’t hide your pupils,” he said. “It’s pathetically easy to see how desperately blown with lust they are.”
Irritated, I came off the wall. “Really?” I angled my chin sardonically. “Then maybe you should look in the mirror because you look pathetically desperate yourself.” I smirked and dropped my lashes. “But then again, this peanut has a habit of giving that away too.”
Without thinking, I blindly reached with one hand for his groin. I spread my fingers and cupped his dick over his black jeans. My pussy gave a tight clench, realising he was semi-hard already.
Not a peanut. He definitely was not a peanut.
Holding his roaring gaze, I squeezed him. I felt a light jerk against my palm, heard his grunt circle my ears, and embraced the feminine power that clung on to my damp skin.
My satisfaction didn’t last as long as I wished it had. He grabbed my wrist and tore it off him to pin it by my head, seconds before he clamped his other hand around my throat.
His hand was so big and warm and rough against the skin of my neck, completely enveloping it almost. But I couldn’t find it in me to be angered by the possible threat of him breaking my neck.
Sparks scattered all over my skin as he forced my head up and back against the wall with an ounce of pressure under my chin. “You have severely underestimated what you’re playing at by provoking me, Mariyah,” he growled through his teeth, his eyes aglow.
I managed a raspy laugh that successfully sounded unbothered. “Did you get that line from a book? Or was that an original?”
A slow, sneering smirk took over his wide mouth again as he leaned in closer, tightening his grip on my throat. “You don’t seem to realise how quickly and easily I could ruin you. But keep running your mouth like the fucking attention-seeking brat you are, and you’re going to end up regretting it when I have you lying weak and broken with a puddle between your legs.”
My lungs shuddered on a struggling breath, and it wasn’t because he was squeezing my throat. Still, I returned his sneer with false confidence. “Big words, don’t you think? Considering we both know you wouldn’t be able to make me come once, let alone enough times to break me.”
He let out a low, menacing chuckle. “Say it again. I dare you.”
Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t fucking do it, Mariyah!
I tilted my chin higher, angling my mouth right under his. “You couldn’t make me come once even if you had all the skill in the world, Sheri .”
He sucked in a slow breath through his teeth. “You fucking—”
He snapped, crashing his mouth down on mine brutally. The slight sting of lips hitting teeth was there, but his onslaught didn’t give me the chance to fully feel it.
And it was an onslaught. An attack. A battle. A lashing. More than it was a kiss. It was no coaxing call of passion. It was a ravaging. His lips captured mine tug after tug, his tongue drove into my mouth conquering me, and his teeth knew when an opening arrived to sneak in a revengeful bite.
I hadn’t built my defences high enough to resist, and they came tumbling down right over my chest, threatening to suffocate me. I could barely fight back with the way he was holding me by the throat, one hand trapped in his grasp, and my body crowded my his. Still, I bit him, dragged my tongue across his with my own demands, and yanked at the neckline of his T-shirt with my free hand so hard I was sure I heard a tearing sound.
I didn’t melt under his demanding mouth. I came alive. I exploded. I burned. My anger felt anew yet dulled under my desire too. And I wanted to hate the way he tasted, but he was warm and sweet like fruit and chocolate. It was irritatingly addictive. Just like the prickle of his trimmed beard against my skin and his low growls every time I groaned.
My lungs wept for air, but I chased his mouth as he dragged it to the corner of my swollen, stinging lips and nipped. He tugged at my bottom lip until it slipped from between his teeth as he moved back. Dizzy and panting, my eyes took a second to focus on the smirk lifting his reddened mouth.
“You look like you’re about to come already,” he whispered hoarsely.
I was thrumming so hard with arousal I felt like I was about to. But he didn’t need to know that.
“Is that your way of telling me you can’t tell the difference between a turned-on woman and a bored one?” I rasped, letting the wall and his hand hold my shaking body upright.
His thumb eased off the pulse under my ear and traced across my jaw. “So fucking cocky, aren’t you, menace? But I know you’re soaked through for me.”
“Not in the slightest.”
Lies. Lies. Lies. I was lying right through my teeth.
I was soaked. More than I’d thought was humanly possible.
Worse even, there was a mini heartbeat throbbing so hard in my clit. A blatant give away of how badly I wanted him despite wanting to break his fucking teeth too.
He arched a brow. “Really?” It was a rhetorical question, but I opened my mouth—
A gasp flooded out when he kicked one of my feet further apart from the other. Pushing my head back against the wall with his hand around my throat, he let go of my wrist and delved right under the short skirt of my dress.
There was no dragged-out moment of breathless anticipation. He pressed two fingers right against the damp spot on my boy shorts, pushing the wet fabric into my aching pussy hole.
My jaw collapsed on a breathless sound as my hips jerked away from the wall and into his fingers. Fireworks exploded within me at the shock of pleasure, echoing mini afterquakes that made my legs shake.
“Fuck,” he groaned low and long before it turned into a grated chuckle. His eyes glowed savagely. “I should beat your ass for trying to lie to me.” His fingers rubbed in a circle. “Next time I will.”
It was so hard not to rock my hips forward so his fingers touched my throbbing clit. I gritted my teeth, desperate to distract myself. “Bold of you to assume there’ll be a next time.”
Besides his smirk, he didn’t acknowledge what I said. Instead, he scissored his fingers and dragged them to the apex of my sex. He went around the sides of my clit, avoiding it entirely as he traced his path back and forth a few times. When I least expected it, he pressed his fingers back together again, pinching and rubbing my clit between them, the damp fabric creating an extra layer of friction.
A choked whine trampled across the back of my teeth, and I curled my hands into his T-shirt. My toes pressed into the soles of my trainers, searching for solid ground.
Shehryar’s pupils expanded further, making him look manic. He lowered his mouth close to mine as he pinched the sensitive bud harder. I tried to push him back, but my arms were shaking too much.
“You know I didn’t take you for a cotton shorts kind of girl,” he purred, releasing my clit to rub the length of my pussy.
“Are you talking bullshit because you know you won’t make me come?” I snarled.
His left brow lifted at the challenge.
My eyes widened as a sharp zing shot through my clit and chattered through my teeth. I let out a broken cry and flew up onto my toes. Tears sprung to my eyes as I gasped over the pain that coiled around my pleasure, trying to figure out what he’d just done.
“You…you…” I sucked in a breath. “You fucking flicked me.”
“And I will again if you carry on mouthing off,” he said, skating his lips across my cheek to my ear, grazing my skin with his facial hair. “Try me.”
I shuddered and clawed at his hard pecs in frustration, but I bit the inside of my cheek, refusing to rise up to the test if it was going to get my clit flicked.
“So, now you want to be a good girl and listen?” he said, lazy and arrogant, before nipping at my earlobe. I strained, trying to get away from the assault on my nerves, but his hand on my throat kept me still. “Let’s move these out of the way then.”
As he kissed, surprisingly gently, down my jaw, his hand moved back to my arse and found the band of my boy shorts. I didn’t help him, but he managed just fine to tug them down to the middle of my thighs. The cotton only stretched so much, forcing my legs slightly back together.
Wild eyes locked on mine, he pushed his hand down the gap between my underwear and bare sex. His swollen lips brushed across my mouth with the natural sway of our bodies, parted like they were ready to suck in whatever sound I made. Slowly, he rubbed two blunt fingers between my pussy lips. He groaned, and I moaned at the same time, unable to breathe as he spread my wetness around.
“You’re awfully wet considering you hate me,” he whispered smugly.
I snuck my tongue out, moistening my lips and just touching his. “Are you mimicking Candy in hopes that I’ll come to like you?”
His eyes flashed with jealous rage, and his jaw muscle visibly ticked.
He shoved two thick, long fingers inside me.
My back lurched off the wall as I choked on a gasp. The stretch and sudden invasion made my stomach flutter and muscles clench. I quickly let go of his top with one hand, clasping his wrist under my chin, trying to find some balance and grounding.
And then he pumped. Neither fast nor slow. But steady and full and as deep as his fingers would go, his palm hitting my clit on every upward drive and the pads of his finger curling into my upper wall.
He knew exactly what to do to keep my mouth hanging open, throwing pleasure around in my middle like a bouncy ball. It was infuriating. It was fucking bliss.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. What the fuck was going on?
I was getting finger-fucked by the man I hated in a palace corridor where anyone could’ve walked by. How? Why? I shouldn’t have wanted it. But I wanted more.
His hand tightened around my throat, dragging me out of my head, before he took my lips in a searing kiss. He rolled his tongue around my mouth like he owned every inch of it. I tried to battle him, but when his fingers started thrusting harder, I was pretty much just holding my tongue to his, tasting him and feeling him. Hating him while I memorised him.
“When my fingers are in your cunt,” he growled into my mouth, “you don’t fucking say another man’s name, is that clear?” He ground the heel of his palm against my clit as he rocked his fingers faster. “You say my name, or you call me Daddy, that’s it.”
My mind was shutting down as he forced me closer to the edge. I couldn’t reply. I tried to bare my teeth at him, but they tore apart within seconds as my lungs fought to fill with enough air.
All the telltale signs were there—my heart ran a mile a minute, my breaths were quick and shallow, I couldn’t close my mouth, and my muscles were tightening like springs just before they shot off.
If I hadn’t been drowning in the sensation, I might’ve been surprised by how quickly he’d managed to get me to a climax. But I refused to attribute it to him and not the situation, the pent-up arousal, and everything that had led up to the moment.
“Look at you,” he whispered more to himself than to me. “Just fucking look at you.”
I felt the words in my stomach, and they were the last push I needed. I squeezed my eyes shut as my pleasure rose to the peak of a roller coaster just before the sudden, overwhelming drop.
“Oh fuck, fuck, fuck,” I chanted, following the breathless words with a pained whine, but—
His fingers pulled out with a slick sound.
Everything around me went still. All except for the noise of blood and my heartbeat in my ear.
My insides clenched and throbbed around nothing.
The white edging my vision dissipated, leaving me in bitter darkness.
The roller coaster holding the train of my orgasm collapsed at the structure.
Confusion and disappointment warred on my brows before finally, my lashes flew up to find out what had gone wrong.
Smug, arrogant power swam in the slither of pale green left in Shehryar’s eyes as he stared at me, breathing in my fluster and turmoil and growing wider and taller with pride.
“What’s wrong?” he purred quietly. “Didn’t you come?”
My lashes fluttered as he dragged his hand out from under my skirt.
“But that’s right.” He lifted his hand up to our faces, spreading his fingers and showing off the creamed wetness coating his middle and third finger. “You said I couldn’t make you come.”
A slow rise of rage climbed up inside me, sticking an icepick into each of my ribs.
He’d brought me to the edge just to fucking deny me. To prove my point. Literally.
He swiped the back of his slick fingers across my lips, painting them in my wetness, and his heavy-lidded eyes watched, completely entrapped. I jerked my head away angrily, but his other hand was still wrapped around my throat, refusing to let me go anywhere.
“You’re a fucking—” But I quickly pressed my jaws together, locking my fury behind my teeth.
“I’ll let you come, but—”
“I’d rather eat shit than beg you for an orgasm,” I spat out immediately.
I wanted to gouge his eyes out when his kiss-stung lips spread into an arrogant smirk. “Don’t worry,” he purred. “I won’t make you beg for one.” He dropped his head closer. “But I’ll have you begging me to stop giving you so many.” His thumb pushed up under my chin, forcing my face higher. “If you can behave for the rest of the night, I’ll show you what I mean.”
He rubbed my wetness into my lips once more. “I’ll be your Daddy, little menace.”
And then he pressed his mouth to mine and licked my juices from my lips. He groaned deeply.
I lurched in raw frustration, but he was already off me, his hand gone from my throat, his heat no longer stroking my skin. His eyes trailed down my body in a once-over and then he turned away.
Without a sideways glance, he climbed up the stairs.
I watched him suck on his fingers that had been inside me until he disappeared out of sight.
And I just stood there. My underwear halfway down my thighs, seething, left wanting, curious, aching, spiteful, and embarrassed. Humiliated. Craving more at his hands.
I wanted to rip him apart. But I wanted him to finish ripping me apart first.
I wanted revenge. And I was going to get it.
He might’ve started this. But I was going to finish it.
I was going to finish, full stop .