Chapter 2
Mariyah
T he next morning, despite the complaints of my jet-lagged body, I made my way to the palace gym with some directions from the kitchen staff I met when I went to fill my bottle. I honestly wasn’t exactly sure how I’d managed to convince myself to get out of the blissful silk sheets on my bed, but I’d done it.
The door to the gym was just like any other carved white door in the palace, but when I twisted the handle, I was quickly met with the familiar clank of weight plates hitting reinforced flooring.
Despite Esmeralda having told me all the palace staff had access to the gym too, it was empty except for two sweaty men working out on slightly raised flooring with a deadlift bar and plates in front of them.
One was my oh-so-sexy future husband (if I had my way).
The other was the leader of the D.O.N.— Dickhead Organisation of Neves.
My heart rate spiked for the former. For the latter, a growling heat twisted in my belly.
Unfortunately, that one was the one whose gaze I caught in the full mirror behind them. Piercing pale pools that swallowed my soul and left me feeling irritatingly hot and itchy.
The heavy clank of my best friend’s brother, King Kareem, dropping the bar and plates on the platform snapped Shehryar’s gaze away and wiped the buzz of awareness from my skin.
“One more,” Shehryar said to the king as I quietly pressed the door shut.
King Kareem huffed out a breath as he shook his head, but he remained bent over the bar with two big plates on each side, his hands wrapped around it. “Sher—”
“One more, Your Majesty.”
Kareem hissed out an irritated sound but dropped his lower back, braced his shoulders, and with a gritted sound, stood upright, pulling the bar with him.
“Hold it,” Shehryar quickly said, his hands on his hips as he eyed the other man’s form closely.
I wasn’t sure what I was expecting from the strong, handsome king. Maybe the typical red-faced grunt in a desperate attempt to find the last ounce of strength before his grip gave up.
I definitely wasn’t prepared for him to throw his head back and growl up at the ceiling between clenched teeth. Like a full-on lion-tiger-bear growl that rumbled from deep within his throat.
Oh my…
My lips fell apart in shameless admiration. I knew I was blatantly staring, but I couldn’t stop myself from drinking up the gorgeous strain of his damp neck nor the way the corded muscles and veins all down his arms flexed so deliciously.
Bloody fucking Neves. He was so unbelievably hot.
I shifted on my feet, swallowing my drool, my gaze flicking away to process what I’d just witnessed.
But it got stuck. Or caught rather.
Shehryar was glaring at me through the mirror, his thick, arched brows bunched, and his eyes thin, flashing with a darkness that made my shoulders tighten.
I lifted my chin and scrunched one side of my face in reply. What , I silently spat.
His bottom jaw rolled slowly before he set his eyes back on the king, the inexplicable emotion fading away from his scowl. “And release,” he said, a rough lilt to his voice.
What the actual fuck?
King Kareem dropped the bar with a low groan, and the plates clanked loudly against the reinforced floor. He swayed back and settled his hands on his hips, panting heavily as he caught his breath. His eyes narrowed on Shehryar, but Shehryar glowered back without any fear of having his head chopped off for committing treason. If only that was still legal.
Neither man seemed to want to crumble first, and in their silence, it was impossible not to take note of the difference in their builds.
Shehryar might have been wearing a loose, oversized T-shirt and slim-fit shorts that cut off above his knees, but for some annoying reason, it didn’t make him look smaller. If anything, the hanging look of his clothes emphasised his two hundred and fifty pounds of muscles. Fucking gym freak .
But in no way was my growling husband-to-be lacking. Shehryar was the taller man, but not by a lot. King Kareem was definitely hitting the six-foot-one mark. And I had to admit, in his pictures, he’d looked slimmer. But the bulking and weight training Esmeralda told me he’d been doing for the past nine months had clearly worked; he could definitely claim muscular build status.
Not in a body-builder way. Kareem was still very much on the leaner side of the scale, but his fitted, long-sleeved T-shirt showed off the defined curvature on his arms and shoulders and the taper in his waist. And damn, my man had an arse I could stare at for days.
I almost flinched when someone huffed, thinking I’d been caught perving on the King of Jahandar’s derriere, but I relaxed when I realised it was only him growing bored of Shehryar’s staring contest.
“I fucking hate you,” Kareem rasped with a touch of tired amusement.
Startled by the king’s vocabulary, which I could so get behind, a laugh burst from me, causing both men to glance my way. Shehryar with a scowl I didn’t bother paying attention to, and Kareem with a wide-eyed look that softened into a little man-smile as he shifted to face me.
“Mariyah. I apologise. I didn’t realise you had come in,” he said.
“I should probably be the one apologising, Your Majesty,” I replied with a grin. “I was the one gawking at you lifting weights, but I can’t lie—hearing you swear was totally epic.”
He scoffed a breathy sound, and a slight pink washed over his cheeks as his smile tilted higher. Fuck, he’s so cute! “I’m sure I insisted last night that you call me Kareem.”
Gosh, how any woman could withstand his gentlemanly voice and killer looks was beyond me.
King Kareem—I meant Kareem —and Esmeralda were no doubt siblings, and yet somehow the same features they’d inherited from their father looked distinctively different on their faces.
His golden skin tone had pretty much the same warmth as Esmeralda’s, but it was altered by the darker shade of his chocolate-brown hair cut short and in gentle waves. Straight eyebrows sat above rich brown eyes, different to Esmeralda’s, but they were still mesmerising and warm. All tied together with a straight nose and a shaven jaw that had a stern set to it.
The plains of his face didn’t hold the harshness Esmeralda had once spoken of. And considering the summary she had given me after the Peace Celebrations, the man didn’t look so worn out either. He looked healthy, happy. Light . Though he did look a few years older than his age of thirty-one. But not in a bad way. More in a sexy, classy, “ Can I call you Daddy?” way.
“Well then, Kareem ,” I said, emphasising his name, as I walked towards him. “Are you at the end of your workout, or can you stick around and help me train?”
Both Kareem and I jumped in our own skins when a loud metal clank shattered through the conversation. I whipped around and Shehryar stood by the deadlift bar as it rocked gently between his feet. One end was missing the plates.
The butter-fingered dickhead stared down his nose at me, all ice-cold flames. He held the two circular weights in his massive hands like they weighed nothing. “His Majesty can’t stick around,” he said, setting them on the angled rack of different sized plates. “He has an early breakfast today so that he can leave on time for a meeting with the head councillors in government.”
I rolled my eyes. “Thanks for the info, Sheri, but I wasn’t talking to you.” Then to Kareem, I said, “Is that okay? We can do some cardio if you’re finishing up.”
Kareem rubbed the back of his neck, smiling sheepishly. “Well…”
“If your intention was only to come here and harass His Majesty, then you need to leave. Now.”
Oh my—why was this dickhead sticking his nose in something that had nothing to do with him?
Steam shot through my body, heating up my cheeks and flooding out my ears. But I plastered a sickly-sweet smile on my mouth and cocked my hip. “Again, I don’t remember asking for your useless opinion, but since you mentioned it, asking someone isn’t harassment. And if that’s what you’re being told when you approach women, then it’s clearly a you problem.”
The choked sound that bounced off the gym walls didn’t come from Shehryar or me.
“You have a warped idea of asking if it includes making someone uncomfortable,” the dickhead said, placing the other weighted plates on the rack with a careless shove of his hands.
“Uncomfortable?” I scoffed. “I wasn’t aware you were a mind reader.”
His lips tugged up in a smirk so slight. To anyone else it wouldn’t have been noticeable. I noticed . And it sent a raging tornado twisting through my middle.
“I don’t need to be a mind reader to see it written all over His Majesty’s face.”
I stretched to my full height, but I didn’t let the smile waver from my face even though I wanted to snarl at him. “Oh, is that what you think? How about we just ask him?”
I swivelled on the balls of my feet to Kareem, and his frozen gaze settled on me. He looked like a deer facing headlights on one side and a hunter on the other, startled to the point of confusion.
That wasn’t how I wanted him to look at me. It was all Shehryar’s bloody fault. But it was too late to back down. I couldn’t when my pride was at stake.
“Kareem. Am I making you uncomfortable?”
The king’s eyes froze wide. “Uh…no?”
My shoulders fell. Forget someone with fully functioning hearing, even a deaf person would have caught how unconvincing his answer was.
Shehryar scoffed, and the sound taunted me on repeat. I gritted my teeth over the sting of blood in my cheeks and the tips of my ears. It was made worse by the fact no retort came to mind quick enough. All I could do was roll my hands into fists to stop myself from strangling Shehryar as he picked up the weighted bar in one hand.
“No. No, Shehryar,” Kareem quickly said. “Mariyah was right. She wasn’t making me uncomfortable. I just…” He glanced between me and Shehryar. “I’m a little surprised. Esmeralda never mentioned the animosity between you two.”
Shehryar slammed the bar down on a stacked rack next to the plate weights. “There’s nothing to mention.”
At the same time, I rolled my eyes and said, “As if I’d waste an ounce of my energy on him.”
There were a couple of beats of silence. “Of course.” Kareem cleared his throat. “Um, what were you going to train again?”
I perked up instantly. “Does that mean you’ll stick around for a bit?”
“Yes. I can for ten, fifteen minutes.”
“Well, it’s leg day today, and I could do with a spot while I squat…” I lifted my brows and widened my eyes, knowing the sweet look of hope it portrayed. “If you don’t mind, of course.”
He smiled. “I don’t mind.”
I beamed, opening my mouth to speak, but the voice that slammed against the walls didn’t belong to me.
“No,” Shehryar rumbled. A dark shadow cast over his pale-green eyes, his brows knotting together so ridiculously fiercely, and of course, it was all fucking directed at me. When he was the one bloody cockblocking me .
Why the fuck couldn’t he just do us both a favour and piss off? Why did he keep interrupting my conversation with Kareem?
“Why not?” I said through gritted teeth.
Shehryar paused like he was taking a moment to think. Then his shoulders slipped down, and his eyes wore that practiced mask again. His frown didn’t quite fade away as he addressed Kareem. “I promised Sully that you would be ready beforehand so that he could go over the meeting agenda with you, and you have yet to do a twenty-minute jog outside as the doctor insisted.”
Kareem opened his mouth to say something, but his words turned into a sigh. “Unfortunately, he’s right.” He offered me a small smile. “I may be the monarch, but Sully will have my head if I am late.”
Sully, Kareem’s private secretary, had the silently intimidating attitude and appearance of a stereotypical cartoon butler. A tall, lithe, older man with white combed back hair, a bushy moustache, signature white gloves, and a face that never seemed to show any emotion.
“That’s okay,” I said with a forced smile and shrug. “I can’t exactly keep you from running the state. Or running outside either.”
“According to my doctor, running outside is supposed to be good for me.” He leaned closer. “Though I hate it. Not being outside. I hate the running.”
I chuckled as vindictive me inside my head poked her tongue out at Shehryar. “You’re speaking to my soul, Your Majesty, and it’s making me feel a certain kind of way.” I winked.
Yes, I had just flirted with a king, and no, I was not sorry about it. Especially when his cheeks ignited adorably with colour as his mouth opened and closed for a second.
But for the third fucking time, the sound of weights pummelling to the floor shattered the air.
Shehryar slumped against the tall back of the workout bench he was sitting on, bracing his hands on his spread thighs as he breathed deep and silent, two dumbbells sitting at his feet. I wasn’t sure when he’d moved to the bench and picked them up, but when I caught his stare in the mirror, I knew with certainty he’d dropped them on purpose like everything else and was gloating on the inside.
A violent growl rose in my throat, but he didn’t say or do anything else, so I forced down the accusation. Only because I didn’t want Kareem to think I was a feral, angry bird.
“I most likely won’t be back until the evening,” the king said. “But Esmeralda made me promise I’d return in time for your dinner on the beach, so I shall see you then.”
“I look forward to it,” I said, giving him my best smile. “Have fun in parliament.”
He smiled back. I bowed my head. He thanked Shehryar, and then the beautiful man left.
The moment the door closed, my smile evaporated.
I swung around, teeth bared, and hands locked in fists.
So fucking ready to go to war with the only man who’d ever gotten under my skin in the worst way possible.