Burning Daylight: Chapter 10

This feels different than anything I’ve ever experienced.

It feels reckless, and hot, and…kind of perfect.

I’ve never been so vulnerable in front of anyone, and with every stroke of his pencil across the room, he strips away another piece of me, like I’m naked in front of him, showcasing my biggest insecurities all without saying a word.

I’m not sure how long it’s been since there’s no visible clock from this vantage point, and I’m afraid to move.

Instead, I just soak him in.

The way his brows dip in concentration, or how his jaw flexes when he tilts his head, his eyes ignited with the darkest kind of fire as he places them on different parts of me and then lowers them to the page.

His sketchbook rests on his leg, one ankle slung over his opposite knee, and the tattoos on his arms flex with every stroke of his pencil.

A lock of hair falls over his forehead, and he absentmindedly brushes it back, his tongue swiping against his bottom lip.

Fire scorches up my spine, arousal pouring through me until I’m drunk on it.

His dark gaze flicks up to mine. “You okay?”

The way he says it—low, rough, and raspy—sends a jolt between my legs. My thighs tense at his tone, heat curling low in my stomach, and the selfish part of me hopes he’s just as affected by me as I am by him.

“Fine,” I reply, but it comes out as a whisper.

“Try not to move,” he instructs again.

“Sorry.”

A small grin tilts his lips as he continues to sketch. “For a girl who doesn’t like to apologize, you sure do it a lot.”

“I never said I didn’t like to.”

“Call it an educated guess.”

I swallow. “I don’t mind apologizing to people who deserve it.”

He stills for half a second, then his pencil moves again.

“Sorry,” I say again. “Am I not supposed to talk?”

“I like your voice.” He smiles. “It’d be a shame not to hear it.”

My stomach flips, butterflies soaring back to life, and just like it always does, it puts me on edge.

“You flirt with me like this, but you don’t even know me,” I mutter. “Is this your thing? This blanket charm with every girl who stumbles through your door?”

“You didn’t exactly stumble.” He looks up, amused. “You stalked; let’s not rewrite history.”

I give him a look.

“Besides, I know about you,” he continues, his tone more serious.

My eyes slide to his, locking onto his gaze. “Oh? And what could you possibly know?”

It’s quiet for a few seconds, like he’s trying to decide how much he wants to say, and then he’s staring back down at the paper, his pencil moving again. “I think you’re lonely.”

His words slap my chest, and my muscles tense.

The pencil keeps floating from one area of the page to another, his eyes flickering to me and then back again, focused and calm. “When something’s out of your comfort zone, you lash out with insults, cross your arms, and do that little squint with your eyes like you’re trying to convince yourself you don’t care.”

Another stroke of the pencil. Another quiet moment.

“You chew on your bottom lip when you’re overthinking, you twist your fingers together when you’re nervous, and every single time you’ve smiled…like actually smiled in my presence, you look surprised, like you had forgotten what it felt like.”

My throat tightens, an unsteady feeling growing inside me, and damn him for paying attention. For seeing me like that as if he has any right.

“Isn’t everyone?” I ask. “Lonely, I mean.”

“Fair enough.” He nods. “Tell me about you, then, Little Rose.”

My body shifts, but I try to keep as still as possible while he draws.

“I play the piano, although not very well, despite years of lessons. I can speak conversationally in four different languages, and I was the valedictorian of my high school.”

“No doubt the prom queen, too.” A small grin lights up his face. It’s cocky and effortless, and I hate the way it fits his features perfectly.

I roll my lips together. He’s right, but I’m not going to tell him that.

“I’m graduating this week,” I continue, my voice growing softer. “And then I’ll go back home to Rosebrook Falls. Well, I guess I’m going back before that, really.”

His pencil slows. “You’re not going to your own graduation?”

I try to smile, to…I don’t know…laugh it off or something, but it feels brittle. A slow burn builds in my throat, crawling up until it pools hot behind my eyes. I blink hard and fast.

Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t fucking cry.

If I break in front of him, and he draws it into this sketch like it’s just another part of me, I’ll launch myself off the couch and out the nearest window.

From the corner of my eye, I see him zone in on my nonexistent tears. But he doesn’t call it out. Doesn’t make it worse.

He lets out a low hum and then drawls, “That’s fascinating, but I asked about you. Not what you do, or don’t do, as it were.”

I frown. “I don’t… I guess I’m not sure how to answer you, then. That is me. It’s all I’ve ever known.”

He stops drawing completely now, his eyes steady and dark and burning a hole through me. “That’s a shame.”

My face heats. I swallow heavily, my mouth suddenly dry. “I don’t want to talk anymore.”

His jaw clenches, and he nods, his pencil making broad strokes again.

The air shifts and changes, a different type of vulnerability laying in the space between us.

Minutes pass, and I spend the majority of them either watching him in a sick type of fascination or staring at the ceiling and trying not to regret that I asked him to do this in the first place.

“I love to write.”

It’s barely audible, but it feels like I screamed it into a silent room.

He pauses his ministrations, but then he continues drawing like he’s afraid if he reacts to my words, I’ll stop saying them.

“What do you write?” he asks.

“Anything. Everything. I don’t know, it’s like…these stories pop into my head, and the characters won’t shut up until I get them down on paper.”

“Is that what you went to school for?”

“Yeah, right.” I laugh at the absurdity. My parents would never let me take up anything to do with writing as a degree. “Psychology.”

“Ah.” He clicks his tongue, tapping the pencil against his knee. “The degree you get when you don’t know what to get.”

“Some people love it,” I argue.

“And do you?”

Do I?

“The only thing I’ve ever really wanted to do is tell stories,” I admit.

He leans forward, watching me like I’m a puzzle he’s trying to solve. His voice is low but firm. “So tell stories, Little Rose.”

My stomach sinks.

He doesn’t get it. Or maybe I’m just now realizing how pathetic I sound, pouring out this passion, only to follow it up with the confession that I’ve done absolutely nothing about it.

But what’s the point?

My family will have my future laid out for me the second I go back home. It’s already happening, quietly and strategically, just like it always does. That’s why I’m missing graduation, after all, because when my mother says jump, I don’t ask why. I ask, “How high?”

Fighting it would be pointless.

It’s never worked out for anyone else in my family, and I have no delusions it would work out for me.

Especially not me.

“You don’t get it,” I mutter.

“Then explain it to me.”

“With my family, it’s…” I hesitate, because maybe I’m about to treat him like a therapist, and that’s crazy considering I don’t even know his name. But if I can’t say it to a stranger, then I’ll probably never say it at all.

So I take a deep breath in, and I let it all out.

“I’m the girl of the bunch. I’m expected to smile, stay quiet, marry well, and show up when I’m told. It’s all about appearance, you know? Reputation. Optics…”

He hums, something flashing through his gaze. “And writing doesn’t fit in that box.”

I swallow around the knot tightening in my throat.

“Writing doesn’t fit,” I echo. “Is that how it is for you?” I ask, looking at his sketchbook. “You just want to draw, and so you do?”

He nods. “Pretty much.”

I think about the freedom in his answer, and I can relate, I guess. These past four years, away from the suffocating proximity of my mother’s voice and my father’s absence, there’s been…space.

Space to breathe. To think. To write.

And in those moments, when I’ve opened up my journal, or pulled up a blank page on my laptop and let myself fall headfirst into a story, I’ve felt something I hadn’t even realized I was missing.

Freedom.

Not even just from my family, but from me. From the version of myself that’s shaped around what everyone else needs. The agreeable daughter. The smiling Calloway girl. The one who nods when told, even when my vocal cords ache from holding back a scream.

But here in California, away at college? That version was allowed to disappear.

At least some of the time.

I think I’m mourning whoever this version is already. She’s about to die—metaphorically speaking—once I go back home.

“Is it this thing inside of you just clawing its way to the surface, desperate to get out?” I ask. “When you draw, I mean.”

He watches me for a long moment, and then he blows out a breath. “Yeah. It’s exactly like that, actually.”

“And is this what you do for a living? Your art?”

“I do what I have to do so I can take care of my family.”

That wasn’t really an answer to my question, but I don’t push.

He sighs, setting his black sketchbook on the coffee table with a thud, and then rises to his feet. I track his movements, and in a few steps, he’s looming over me like he’s about to devour me whole.

“Done already?” I ask, my voice thinner than I want it to be.

He doesn’t answer right away. He just stares at me with something wild behind his eyes.

“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.

But this feels like a line. One that my mother can probably sense me breaking from across the country.

Still, my body moves before my brain can protest, and I lift my arm from where it rests above my head, my fingers shaking slightly as I reach for him.

His jaw tightens, and his eyes are burning, but he doesn’t pull away.

I curl my hand around his and guide it down, until it’s resting against my collarbone, my pulse fluttering beneath his palm. “Touch me,” I whisper.

He does.

His hand skims across my chest and up to my throat, his fingers lightly wrapping around it like a necklace.

I press my legs together to stem the ache blooming between them, but I don’t move. I can’t.

Every nerve lights up under his touch, like my skin has turned electric.

His other hand traces from my fingertips where they’re still resting over my head, and along the length of my arm in one slow, reverent sweep, making me shiver.

He keeps going, down the curve of my shoulder, over the top of my chest, and then lower, until he’s ghosting across my breast. My breath catches, and I arch toward him without even thinking, needing more.

“Fuck,” he murmurs.

His grip around my throat tightens, not enough to hurt, just enough to remind me he’s there, and his other hand cups me fully, palming me through the thin layer of my shirt, a low groan rumbling in his chest as he does, like he’s barely holding himself together.

His palm slips from my neck and moves down my stomach, slow and possessive, until his fingers tease the edge of my waistband.

There’s a pause. A moment of hesitation, of our eyes meeting; a question in his, and permission in mine.

“Say it,” he demands, his voice low. “Tell me you want it.”

“I want it,” I practically beg.

And then he’s there. His thick fingers beneath the fabric and cupping me where I’m begging for him the most.

I moan, and his eyes flash, his fingers exploring.

“Does that feel good?” he rasps.

“So good,” I reply, biting my lip.

He presses harder, slow circles against my clit until I’m throbbing and swollen and aching for him to fill me.

“Goddamn, you’re soaked.” His tone is awed. “Is this all for me, Little Rose?”

“Yes,” I whisper. “God, yes.”

He dips his head, his lips brushing against my jaw as his fingers move slow and teasing, just enough to make me pant.

“You’ve been driving me crazy since the moment I saw you. Walking around like you don’t know how fucking sexy you are.”

I gasp, clutching the fabric of his shirt.

His mouth grazes my ear. “You’re going to let me make you come, right here on this couch, with my hand on your pussy like the filthy girl you are, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” I breathe out again, because apparently, it’s the only thing I can say.

“Tell me what you need,” he growls, his voice raspy.

“You, I need your fingers,” I plead, heat spreading beneath my skin. “Put them in me.”

He listens, sliding them from my clit down to my entrance and dipping them inside, and then before I can even think, his mouth crashes against mine, hot and demanding, his lips pulling a gasp from my throat. He takes full advantage, slipping his tongue in and tangling it with mine like he owns my breath now, too. He tastes like trouble, and temptation, and whatever this tension is that’s been crackling between us since the second we met.

It’s teeth, and tongue, and hunger, and I fist the front of his shirt like he’s the only thing anchoring me on Earth.

He groans low in his chest when I bite down on his bottom lip, and the sound reverberates through me.

His free hand moves to frame my face, his thumb brushing over my jaw, and the contrast of his mouth being desperate and his touch being reverent is dizzying. I tilt my head and deepen the kiss, and when I suck his tongue, it’s like a dam breaks.

Suddenly, we’re not just kissing anymore, we’re devouring.

He finally pulls away, his fingers curling deep inside me, and his palm pressing with the perfect amount of pressure against my clit and moving in slow circles.

“You feel so good,” he says. “So soft. So wet.”

I arch into him, every thought dissolving except how he’s finger-fucking me within an inch of my life, and how is it possible that no other man has made me feel as 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 whimper. “You’re such a liar.”

“I am.” He smirks. “But not about this.”

His thumb circles my clit in slow, devastating strokes. “Don’t go quiet on me now, baby. Let me hear you.”

“I can’t⁠—”

“You can.”

My head falls back, eyes fluttering shut. “Don’t stop.”

His mouth finds my neck, his teeth dragging across the skin there, and the tension coils tight, heat spreading up my legs, wrapping around my back and squeezing into my chest.

My pussy pulses around his fingers.

“That’s it. Just like that,” he praises. “Give it to me.”

I do. I let go, shuddering beneath him as waves of white-hot pleasure crash through my body and retreat only to surge back and drown me all over again.

He holds me through it, his fingers moving gently now, his lips soft as they brush my cheek, like he’s keeping me steady in a violent storm.

I’m trembling as I come back down, aftershocks rippling like a current, and he has a dazed look on his face.

There’s something visceral and desperate in his gaze, and he takes his fingers from inside me and brings them up, sucking them into his mouth and then groaning at my taste.

Jesus.

I shoot forward, reaching for him, my hands fumbling with his waistband, a sudden desperation taking over me like I’m possessed. I need to return the favor. Want to feel his thick cock resting on my tongue, his grip in my hair, his moans in my ears.

He’s hard as I slip beneath his gray sweatpants, palming him over his boxers, and his breath is ragged, his eyes locked on mine with a fierceness that makes my stomach clench.

“Little Rose,” he starts, attempting to bat my hand away.

“I want to,” I argue, rising on my knees until my lips brush his jaw. I stroke him through the fabric, and he pulses in my hand. “Let me make you feel good.”

Another pull, and his dick jerks again. His features contort in pleasure, and he hisses through his teeth, muscles tightening.

“Wait,” he says, his fingers catching mine.

I pause, blinking up at him, my heart hammering against my ribs.

A pained look crosses his face, like he hates himself for stopping me.

Honestly, I kind of hate him right now for it, too.

“There’s something you should—” he starts.

This time, it isn’t me that cuts him off.

It’s a knock on the door.