Burning Daylight (Defying the Stars, #1)

by Emily McIntire

“See you when you come back.” “You’ll be waiting a while.” “Guess I’ve got a lot of daylight to burn, then.”

The rogue on the rock, inked in runes she couldn’t read, with eyes like an ocean and a grin that could unravel kingdoms. He called her Princess with a mocking bow, as if he already knew how the story of them would end.

“I don’t normally do this, you know?” she says. The corner of my mouth lifts. “Good. I’m territorial.” “What’s that mean?” “It means you’re mine.” Her lips part.

“What is it about you?” he murmurs, his gaze dragging over me like he’s starving. My heart stutters. That same arousal from earlier rushes back, pinning me in place. “You know…let loose. Just be Juliette.” Felicity’s voice whispers through my head, taunting me. And God, I want to.

good with their cock as he does with his hand? “I’ve wanted this since the second you opened that smart little mouth on that cliff,” he murmurs. “Thought about what you’d sound like. How you’d taste.”

I love you. That’s why I support your journey toward personal growth via orgasm.

“I’ve been coming here for years. If you had been around, I’d have noticed.” “Maybe you just didn’t see me.” He takes a slow sip of his coffee without looking away. “Impossible.” “Is it?” “There’s no world that exists where I wouldn’t see you.”

Cars zoom by so closely my hair whips around my face. He glances both ways, then shifts us without a word, putting himself between me and the street. “Rude.” I arch a brow. “What if I want to walk on your left?” He doesn’t look at me when he replies, “Then you’ll have to be mad about it from the safe side.”

And somewhere between the airport and the silence of my childhood bedroom, I finally open up the piece of paper Ryder gave me. It’s the sketch. He did finish it. It’s gorgeous, and intricate, and looks nothing like how I see myself in the mirror. He drew me like I’m a story worth telling. A character worth remembering.

Once upon a time, in a city too big for a small-town girl, she met a stranger who reeked of trouble. He drew her like he knew her secrets, and she let herself believe she was something more than just her name. For a moment, she was art.

“Villain looks good on you, my guy. Your dad’s gonna eat it up.”

I pretend I’m doing the same with my drawings, but to be honest, I can’t stop watching her. She’s… Well, I think she’s kind of everything.

“Oh yeah?” I somehow manage. “So that sketchbook of yours…that’s all me?”

“That sketchbook’s the east,” he whispers. “And you, Juliette, are the sun.”

“Don’t saints have lips, too?” She nods, placing her hands together. “Ones they use to pray.” I move closer until the tips of my shoes touch hers, and my skin prickles from the proximity. “I’m praying to kiss you.” Her chest lifts with a heavy breath, and her mouth parts in invitation. Heat floods through me, electricity snapping between us like little stabs of lightning. “I’m no saint,” she murmurs, her eyes dropping to my lips, then slowly rising again. “But if I were, saints don’t move, even when they grant the prayers.” My stomach flips, nerves sizzling beneath my skin. I reach up, threading my fingers through the hair at the nape of her neck, just like before. “Then don’t move while I act out my prayer.”

“That tasted like a sin, not a prayer,” she says, her tone breathy and inviting. My stomach cinches tight, anticipation zinging through my nerves and heat coiling through my body, making me tense with need. “Then give me my sin again,” I rasp.

“I’m drunk. And you’re…so fucking beautiful. And for some reason, every time I’m near you, it feels like I might die if I don’t touch you.”

“Because every time you smile,” I say, “every time you give me that little look like you can’t decide if you want to throttle me or kiss me, I want to keep you forever.”

“I wish we could be more, Roman.” “We are more, Juliette.”

“Sometimes the only way to protect something as precious as love…is to take it far from where anyone can reach it.”

“So love is art,” Tyler muses, a deadpan look on his face. “Or art is obsession?” “Art is life dressed up in prettier words,” Alex hits back, stretching out one leg in front of him. Tyler chuckles. “Someone put that on a shirt.” I force a smile, but Alex’s words have me free-falling. Because if art is obsession and love is the kind of thing that fuels it… Maybe that’s why being around Roman is like standing too close to a fire, knowing how badly I could get burned, but reaching for it anyway.

“You think I don’t care?” Leaning down, he presses his mouth to mine again, his teeth sinking into my flesh and nipping just hard enough to sting. “You think I don’t worry every single second that

“Stop thinking about me, then,”

“Impossible,” he rasps. “You’re all I think about.”

“Yeah. A great one. She painted with bright, messy strokes; color everywhere. It was always under her nails, and all over the walls, and sometimes even in her hair.”

“I haven’t felt that way since. Not about anyone. Not until you.”

“I am yours. In all the ways that matter.”

But I don’t know, sometimes life doesn’t give us happy endings, you know? Sometimes the bad thing wins.”

“Well.” She lifts a shoulder and gives me a soft smile. “Then I’ll have the faith for both of

And I know it right then, surer and steadier than I’ve ever known ...

“Yeah, Trouble. I’ll go anywhere with you.”

Our hands are tangled together, and it reminds me of back in Cali, before we knew who we were to each other…or before I knew who he was to me. Things were simple then.

“A murderer and a stalker,” he muses. “A match made in heaven.”

“I promise not to kill you if you promise to follow me around for the rest of my life,” he murmurs.

Twisting, and bleeding from the petals. Like it’s wilting mid-bloom. Across the stem, in jagged letters, it says: “And with her kiss, I die.”

“I told you, Juliette. I’m going to paint you into everything.”

“Love doesn’t survive in the dark, Juliette. It demands for you to step into the light.” She looks at me, her eyes sharp.

“What does that mean?” “It means if you ever want to see the morning, you have to forsake the night.” I lift a brow, my chest heavy. “And the night in this scenario is my family?” Beverly laughs. “Your family is midnight, Juliette.”

“Just wondering if you two were together when you were begging me to fuck you with my fingers.”

“Who I’m with is none of your business.”

“Wrong answer, Little Rose. You are my fucking business. Do you want to know why?” Swallowing harshly, I don’t reply. “Because no matter how many times we say that we’re nothing to each other, I can’t get you out of my goddamn head.” He slams his hand against his chest. “Can’t get you out of here, either, so fuck me, I guess, right?”

“I don’t know what you want from me.”

“I want you!” he exclaims, his arms dropping helplessly to his side...

“You’ve been the only genuine thing in my life since showing up to this fucked-up little town, the only thing that feels real, and now I don’t know if even that’s the truth.”

“I want to stop craving you with every breath.”

“I want you to tell me that he doesn’t get to touch you,”

“That nobody else gets to feel you the way I did. The way I’m still desperate to.”

“I want you to tell me to stop,”

“Every person in this town has warned me away from you. My own father just sat across from me and accused you of playing games with me. But they don’t know you, do they, Juliette?”

“No, they don’t.”