The Missing

eased just a little bit of his own anxiety. “I knew it would hurt. It gets better, right?”

    You are so amazing. He had thought that about her for so long, but he hadn’t ever said it to her. She’d think he was a total loser, gushing like that, right? But she really was amazing. Beautiful. Funny. Mysterious even, with this weird psychic thing she had going on. She didn’t act a damn thing like any of the girls Cullen knew at school. She was oddly more adult, without even trying. At college, he was surrounded by girls who were still just confused, scared kids trying to fit into the grown-up world, the same way he felt most of the time.

    But Taige didn’t have any of that. She had no pretenses, she didn’t try to change to fit what others thought she should be. When a lot of the girls he knew had been having sex just to be cool or get guys to like them, she hadn’t. She had waited until she was ready—and she’d chosen him. “You’re amazing,” he whispered, finally voicing the words that had lived inside him for so long. He leaned forward, kissing her gently. He kept his weight off of her and tried to be gentle when he pulled out. He pulled the condom off, grabbing the wrapper and tossing them into the small plastic bag they had brought for garbage. When he looked back at Taige, she was reaching for her shorts.

    But he grabbed them and tossed them to the other side of the blanket. “It gets better,” he whispered. Then he lay between her legs and kissed her. She bucked against him, a soft, strangled shriek escaping her. “You just need to tell me what makes you feel good.”

    OUTSIDE, it was pouring rain.

    Inside the screened-in porch, Taige and Cullen lay on a worn quilt, wrapped in each other’s arms and not talking at all.

    Rose had left for a weekend in Biloxi with some friends, and Taige had asked Cullen to come for dinner Friday night. That had been two days ago. They hadn’t left the house even to go swimming. Cullen’s dad had called him Saturday morning, and Cullen had said he’d be home in time to pack.

    Taige wondered what his dad had thought of that, wondered what Robert Morgan thought of his son spending the weekend with some local girl, but she really didn’t have enough experience to even guess what the guy might think. He was genuinely nice and treated her like she was somebody worth knowing, somebody worthy of his son. Both of Cullen’s parents were like that.

    She tried to picture herself with a kid, wondered how’d she feel if her kid brought somebody to meet her, somebody who mattered. Taige decided she’d feel a little embarrassed. A little out of place. She wouldn’t want to think of her kids having sex, but kids grew up, didn’t they? Cullen was twenty years old.

    A little ribbon of jealousy worked through her, and before she even realized the question was in her mind, she blurted out, “How many girls have you been with?”

    He stiffened, turned his head, and looked at her. A dull rush of color flooded his cheeks as he stared at her. He swallowed nervously, and she could see his Adam’s apple moving under his skin.

    “Uh ...”

    She wasn’t going to take the question back though. She did want to know. What he’d done to her on the beach last weekend, after they’d done it that first time, it didn’t seem like something that a guy with little or no experience might try. And he’d been good at it, too. Good enough that she hadn’t waited more than two days before she talked him into another late-night beach trip. This time, she’d done it to him first, and after he came, she had rolled onto her back and urged him back between her thighs. He’d gone down on her again, and she’d ended up screaming his name and pulling his hair as she came.

    It still hurt some when he was inside her, but it had slowly gotten better, and last night, he’d made her come that way, just from moving inside her. He’d touched her clit while he moved inside her, and it had lit her up like fireworks on the Fourth of July, coming so hard, she’d ended up scratching his back and shoulders all up before she was done.

    “Don’t tell me you haven’t been with any girls,” she warned him, sitting up and pulling her legs to her chest. “I just want to know.”

    “Why? Are we going to get in a fight over it?” he asked warily.

    “Only if you lie to me.” She swallowed the knot in her throat and tucked her chin against her chest. “When you leave for school, we