The Missing

haven’t ever talked about not seeing other people. If you’ve been with some girl at school, it’s not like I never said I didn’t—”

    His hand came up, cupped her chin. He eased her face up until she met his gaze, and then he answered, “Two girls. One before I met you. Then another girl that I dated off and on my senior year and my freshman year at college. She moved out of state at the end of that year and . . .” His voice trailed off, and he was quiet for a minute. He brushed her hair back from her face, caught a long curl in his hand, and wrapped it around his finger.

    Cullen did love to play with her hair. For some reason, seeing him doing it now, while he tried to talk about this, made a fist clench around her heart. No, they hadn’t ever talked about it just being the two of them. Hadn’t really seemed fair, or reasonable, even, with him living a state away. Twenty years old, drop-dead gorgeous, he’d have a bunch of pretty college girls tagging after him. But she didn’t want him with anybody else. Period.

    “She moved out of state,” Taige prompted. “Why not anybody since her? That was more than a year ago.”

    His gaze locked with hers. “Nobody since her because the one girl I really wanted to be with has been on a beach in Alabama,” he said.

    “Me?” she asked and then she felt like an idiot. How many other girls on a beach in Alabama was he seeing?

    He grinned at her and leaned forward. “Yeah, you.” He kissed her and rolled to his knees in front of her, watching her face as he lifted his hands, placed them on the inside of her knees, and gently pushed her thighs apart. “I’ve been dreaming about touching you, having you like this, since the first time I saw you.” His voice dropped to a low, rough whisper that sent shivers down her spine. “Been going out of my mind wanting you. When you really want just one thing, nothing else but that one thing will really do it for you, Taige.”

    He lay down between her thighs and pressed his mouth against her sex, sliding his hands behind her and gripping her waist to keep her still. He licked her clit, and then he looked up at her. “You’re the one thing I’ve been craving, so I wasn’t going to waste my time with anybody else. Not when all I wanted was you.”

    His voice deepened and he rasped, “Lie down. Spread your legs for me.”

    Her back had no sooner touched the ground than he pushed her legs apart, too impatient to wait. “I don’t need to ask if you’ve been with another guy,” he muttered against her. He licked her clit again, stiffened his tongue and pushed it inside, in and out, until she was rocking against his mouth, and she could feel herself hovering, right on the brink. But just when she thought she was going to go flying off into the stratosphere, Cullen stopped. He lifted his head, rested his chin low on her belly, and stared at her. “But I don’t want there to be another guy. I don’t want to think about you letting somebody else touch you like this.”

    He lowered his head, licked her again, teased her right back to the edge again. Then he stopped. Again. He kissed her thigh and then shoved up onto his hands and knees, crawled up the length of her body, and lay down atop her, his cock pressed up against her belly. “Tell me there won’t be another guy.”

    “So long as you promise me there won’t be any more girls,” she countered. “And so long as you stop teasing me . . . right now.”

    He smiled at her, slanted his mouth across her, and pushed inside. “No more girls.”

    “No other guy,” she promised.

    He thrust deep inside her, and Taige, already so primed and ready, came just like that. He didn’t have to kiss her, didn’t have to touch her anywhere else. She came hard and fast, and when it was over, he was still moving inside, staring down at her, his turquoise gaze rapt on her face, his hands fisted in her hair.

    Her lids drooped closed, and he tightened his grip. “Look at me, Taige,” he whispered. She was so damn pretty, so soft and sleek and hot. She lifted her lids and gave him that smile of hers, that teasing, sexy smile that made his dick get hard and twisted his heart and stomach into knots. Everything about her hit him so hard: the way she looked, the way she smiled, the way she laughed, the way she cuddled up against him after one of her dreams, and the way she trusted him to hold her while she slept. She was so perfect—perfect for him.

    Only