Chapter 28
Shehryar
I didn’t immediately leave the small town after I left the café.
The revolving door of emotions I kept running through sent me away from the car I’d borrowed, and I’d ended up walking and walking, searching for some outlet before I erupted.
The fact that I was surrounded by countryside made escaping a lot easier, though several times I contacted Rocco and Yunis, my stand-in, to receive updates on Esmeralda—I might’ve taken the afternoon off, but I couldn’t abandon my duty entirely. Otherwise, I shut myself off from real life for hours, spoke to no one, and just…walked. For miles. In circles. Around a forest trail in some national park until I was tired and hungry, and the sun was setting.
By that point, the anger I’d felt around my father had faded, but in its wake was left an uncomfortable state between numbness and restlessness that clung to my insides like glue.
It was past eleven at night when I returned to Chaukham Palace. The corridors were quiet and sleepy as I slipped up to my room, leaving a trail of sensor lights on behind me.
Except…instead of heading into my own space, I found myself staring at Mariyah’s bedroom door.
I wasn’t sure what compelled my feet to move in that direction, but I ended up in front of it. I lifted my hand, but rather than knocking, I tried the handle.
The door held in place. Locked—again.
The sensible thing would have been to knock. The better thing would have been to head into my room and wash off the damp, gross feeling the afternoon had left on my skin.
Instead, I kept my back turned to the peace and quiet of her absence and dug through my coat pocket for the two bent hairpins I always kept on me.
Just as I pulled them out and aligned one to fit into the keyhole, the click of the lock turning filtered through the air and the door flew open.
A makeup-free Mariyah stood at the threshold of her room in nothing but an oversized pale blue T-shirt and her hair tied in a messy bun above her nape. She scowled between the pins in my hands and my face as she caught me in the unfinished act of picking her bedroom lock.
“Are you fucking serious?” she bit out. “Do you not know how to knock? Or do you have a lock-picking fetish? What is wrong with you?”
I was too taken by the sight of her bare legs, marked with faint freckles and my hickeys, to straighten or answer immediately. But I didn’t exactly care that I’d been caught, so I stood upright and tucked the hairpins back into my pocket with a lazy slowness to my movement.
Her eyes narrowed suspiciously as I stepped towards her, but before she could argue or stop me, I edged into her room.
“What are you doing?”
There was a book on her bed where the duvet had been pushed back and her pillow sat up against the wooden headboard.
“Shehryar.”
I swaggered towards the velvet chaise and shucked my coat. I draped it neatly on one side of the seat, then bent down and tugged at my laces.
“What—” Mariyah made an irritated sound as she shut the door.
Gathering my trainers together, I tucked them under the chaise and out of the way before I turned back to face her.
The little menace glared with her hands on her hips, which pulled the thin fabric of her T-shirt taut around her front. It was obvious she wasn’t wearing a bra underneath, and the knowledge made my balls tighten. When she shifted under my ogling, I raised my gaze to her face to find her cheeks had warmed to a gratifying shade of pink. The corner of my mouth twitched.
She’s cute. So pretty. Beautiful.
And I had clearly lost my mind.
Crossing her arms over her chest, Mariyah leaned her weight on one hip. “Why are you here, Sheri? And why the fuck did you take your shoes off like you’re staying?”
I hated that name. I hated that name. So why did the nudge of irritation I felt feel so fucking good? Like relief. Like something familiar and safe and real. No facades, no lies. Just truth.
I rubbed my teeth together, unable to grapple on to anything going on in my head with any real strength. But neither did I feel recklessly out of control.
“Shehryar,” Mariyah said in irritation. “Why are you here?”
Why am I here?
Honest answer was I didn’t know.
This was Mariyah. I didn’t like her. I should’ve been running in the opposite direction to her menacing presence that drove me beyond mad. But…
Right then she looked and felt like a drug. A combination of cure, torture, and escape. And I wanted it. I craved it. Her . Not just sexually. But her annoying presence too.
I wanted a hit of frustration to replace the mess of numbness I was feeling, and she was the only one who could give me the right kind. The kind she gave me in the morning in the forest.
The kind that distracted my mind from everything but anything related to her. Anger. Passion. Irritation. Curiosity. But all revolving around her .
I needed her to light a match under my skin and fill my veins with fire the way only she could.
Mariyah
I eyed Shehryar’s quiet aura carefully.
Something was clearly off about him.
One, he looked like he’d just come back, but he was in my room instead of his own.
And two, not completely unlike the look he’d worn this morning, the sharp alertness constantly behind his pale-green irises was lacking. Except rather than a distant look of concentration, he wore a blurred look of dissociation, and that made me wary.
Because the last time he’d worn a similar look, he’d verbally hurt me, and I’d attacked him with a pen. The fact that I knew this time the look had to do with whatever happened between him and his dad was making me ten times more aware of his every move.
But I was also ridiculously aware that he’d found his way into my personal space by choice again . And I still wasn’t entirely sure how to deal with the weird, bouncy, tingling, irritating sensation tickling my bones that realisation made me feel, nor this behaviour of his.
“Why are you here, Shehryar?” I said again more sternly, hitching my shoulders, readying myself to roundhouse kick the life out of him if he attacked me first.
He tracked his eyes across my face as if the answer was written on my skin. “If I’m by myself right now, I’ll break something I can’t afford to replace.”
My brows and hands dropped as my defences heightened. “So you came here to lash out at me again instead? Because I swear Shehr—”
“No.” He took slow, swaggering steps towards me, and the way he watched me began to feel unsettling. It was more intense than usual, and not the angry kind. It was something…different that I couldn’t decipher, but it was heavy and yet somehow searching too. It sped up the pace of my heart.
He stopped right in front of me, and I had to tilt my head to meet his stare, even though a confused, wound-up part of me wanted to poke his eyes out for looking at me that way. “But if I throw any punches, I can rest assured you’ll throw them back just as hard.”
He was damn right about that, but I wasn’t sure I liked what he said. I wasn’t exactly offended either. “I’m not your punching bag, Shehryar.”
“I know, menace.” I pulled a face at the name he kept calling me, but he was already turning away. “I’m going to use your shower.”
“What? Why?” I charged around him, blocking his path. “No.” And pointed to the door. “Go deal with whatever shit this is in your own room.”
His eyes hardened. “I don’t have shit to deal with.”
“Yes, you do. Look at the way you’re acting.”
An irritated smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth as he crowded closer. “How am I acting? Like I fucked you sore, and now I plan to do it again? Because that’s the only way I’m acting.”
Heat licked right across my pussy, making it clench up and give a hard, wanting throb.
Fuck, there was no denying I wanted the sex. But I wanted to punch him in the face too.
“Move. Now. This is the last time I’m asking nicely.”
“Asking nicely?” I echoed incredulously. “Is the niceness in the fucking room with us?”
I was about to make a show of looking around us when he took a step back, bent at the waist, and wrapped his arms around my thighs.
I squealed as my world tipped, and I was suddenly staring at the blood-red carpet and Shehryar’s fat arse. I gasped and gripped onto his jumper for support as he jostled me, his shoulder digging into my belly. Then he turned towards the bed, and I finally snapped out of my surprise.
Fury intertwined with embarrassment fired through my body, going straight to my head, and I kicked and slapped at his back. “Shehryar Timur! Put me the fuck down. Now.”
Who the fuck knew how his irritatingly skilful hands did it, but as he dropped me, he dragged my T-shirt up off my arms and head, and I collapsed onto the bed, naked but for a tiny black thong.
“Shehryar,” I shrieked. Humiliation and anger pinched at my cheeks like a cooing aunt who I hadn’t seen in several years.
Hovering above me, he flashed me a cruel, wolfish grin. “So, you do wear thongs…”
“I’m going to fucking kill you,” I hissed, pushing myself upright to scoot back.
But he caught my hands and swiped them out from under me, yanking them over my head. “Try,” he mocked as he deftly wrapped my T-shirt around my wrists.
This again? Fuck, yes.
Uh, you mean, no!
“Shehryar.” I squirmed aggressively, lust, hatred, excitement, and mortification throwing alternative punches at each other inside me. But the harder I wriggled, the wider his smirk grew, and his hands worked quicker, tying my wrists as easily as if I wasn’t fighting him at all.
“You asshole! Fucking maniac. Dickhead. Untie me now. I’m going to rip your balls off and shove them up your nostrils.” I threw angry insult after insult, bucking under him. “Get off me!”
He chuckled a cruel, aroused sound that sunk right to my pulsing sex. And then his hands went to his belt, and my struggles weakened warily. I stilled when I noticed the bulge of his erection. Fuck, he was enjoying this. I gulped as the buckle clinked apart in his hands.
He ripped the leather from his trousers, and my brain flashed struggle, bitch, struggle.
But it was no use. He slipped the leather between my wrists and wrapped it around the fabric tying my hands. I tipped my head back and watched him buckle the belt around one of the rungs in the headboard. He gave it a testing tug. Satisfied it wasn’t going to come undone, he climbed off me.
I gaped as he dragged a horny, heavy-lidded gaze up and down my very exposed body. Each spot he stopped at sparked and twitched as if he were pawing me, stifling the capacity of my lungs.
He dragged his teeth across his bottom lip before his eyes lifted to mine, and I swore, I felt it so acutely against my pussy I nearly whimpered. “Don’t move,” he purred. “And don’t struggle. Because if I come back and find out you’ve hurt yourself, I will beat your ass until you’re sobbing.”
He gave me his back and headed to the ensuite. Before going in, he glanced over his shoulder. “The door’s unlocked by the way.” A smirk stretched across his lips as he arched a brow. “So, unless you want someone to find you tied up, waiting to be fucked by your Daddy—don’t make a noise.”
The door slammed shut behind him.
I blinked. And blinked…and blinked.
Did he…did he just leave me here, fucking tied up, while he uses my shower?
My body went up in red-hot, tingling flames.
“Shehryar fucking Timur! I’m gonna shove your dick up your own fucking asshole!”
My threat was empty bullshit.
Because the only one who had any dick shoved in them was me.