Burning Daylight (Defying the Stars, #1)

by Emily McIntire

“You know me, Roman.”

“He doesn’t get to touch me,” I whisper. My hands glide over his shoulders and wrap around the back of his neck. “Only you get to touch me.”

“Fuck, you taste just as good as I imagined.”

“Is this pussy mine, Juliette?”

“Tell me,” he demands, sliding in a second digit. “Say it. Right now.”

“I want you to come on my face,”

“Goddamn. Look at you.”

“Do you want my cock, baby?”

“Open those pretty little lips for me, Juliette.”

“I need to fuck you, baby.”

“Please, just do it.”

“Tell me it’s mine,”

“It’s yours,” I agree. “Please⁠—”

“You’re so tight,” he groans. “Don’t fight it, baby. Let me in.”

“I can take it,”

“Of course you can take it,”

“You were made for me, Juliette. This body, this cunt, your fucking soul; every inch of you is a perfect fit.”

“You feel that?” he rasps into my ear. “That’s what being mine feels like.”

“You’re mine too,”

“You don’t get it, do you?” He pulls out just enough to torture me. “I’ve always been yours. The moment I met you, I was ruined.”

“Give it to me, Little Rose,” he murmurs, his voice sounding like it’s scraped over gravel. “Make a mess all over me.”

“Come inside me,” I beg. “I want to walk back to him while you’re leaking out of me.”

He slides out of me, thick and dripping, and I exhale heavily at the loss. Roman doesn’t say a word. He just spins me around, releases me and then kneels between my legs. His eyes drop to the mess we made, and before I can gather my thoughts, his mouth is on me again.

he pins my hips with both hands, his tongue dragging through the mix of us with a slow and deliberate type of pressure.

“What do I taste like?”

His grin darkens, and he stands up and leans in until our noses brush. “Mine.”

This is right. This is home. This is everything.

“I won’t make a scene,” he says. “But if he keeps touching you, I’ll find him once he leaves and break every single one of his fingers.”

“Damn you. I find that incredibly attractive.”

My cheeks heat when I think about how I could feel Roman’s cum dripping out of me while I made excuses to Preston. My body still hums with the feel of his hands, and the way he was trying to mold me into something that belonged to him.

“If you want her, really want her, then you must take her. Choose her. Don’t look back. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

My mouth crashes against hers and I moan. She tastes like something I’ve spent my whole life chasing. She tastes like coming home. “Don’t you ever think you’re alone in this,” I grit out against her lips. “Don’t you get it? Don’t you know by now that you consume me?”

“I’m so in love with you, I’ve forgotten how to exist without you,” I say. “I love you like I was made to love you. Like I came into this world just so you could carve out my heart and leave yourself inside it.”

“You’re it for me, Juliette,” I whisper. “You’ve always been it.”

The truth is simple: I love her. Desperately. Endlessly. Irrevocably.

But love doesn’t erase blood, and the lines between our names are still drawn with a deep-red ink too dark to wash away. As long as we both exist in Rosebrook Falls, it doesn’t matter how much we want each other. Our love burns so bright it’s blinding. But hate knows how to swallow up light.

“I need you to hear me,” I tell her, my voice thick. “No matter what happens, I will love you for the rest of this life, and every one that comes after. You are my reason, Juliette. I’ll spend every moment sketching you into the corners of this world.” I pause, swallowing hard. “And when I’m gone, I’ll paint you in the sky.”

“And you’ve wrecked me.”

with her after I’m gone. She’s mine. I’m hers. That’s an irrevocable truth of the universe. But if this is all we get in this life, then let this be the moment I carry into the next.

“You feel that?” I whisper, pulling back out and then slamming back in. “The way you open up for me so fucking good?”

“Yes,”

“That’s all mine.” I bite down on her shoulder, my palm keeping her wrists pressed to the mattress. “This pussy. That sound you make when you come. The beats of your heart a...

her hands shooting to the back of my neck and pulling me down until we’re chest to chest. Heart t...

“You’re mine...

I love it—the way she has to make sure we’re equals in every way, even in this. Because she’s right. I’m hers. Only hers. Forever.

“Of course I’m yours.” I press the words into her mouth. “I feel you everywhere, Juliette. You’re in my goddamn bones.”

I love you. I’m sorry. I’ll sketch you into every corner of the world and paint you across the sky.

“You still gonna paint me in everything?” I ask, a brow raised. His lips twitch. “On my hands, in the sky, in the space between one breath and the next.” “You can’t paint breath,” I remark. “That sounds like a challenge.” I shrug. “Maybe it is.”

“I’ll paint you in the sky, Little Rose,” he promises. “Then I’ll write you in the stars, Trouble,” I whisper back. “That way we’ll always be together.”

If she was the sun, then he was every constellation in the sky. For never was a bond the stars could show, As boundless as Juliette…and her Romeo.