Sallinger, Elene - Reflection (The Chrysalis Series)

‘It’s –’ Her words failed her and she swallowed hard.

He took the CleanSlate from her, gently this time, turned it off, and put it back in his pack before turning to face her.

‘Bridget. Look, I’m not going to apologise for drawing you. It’s what I do. I draw, but I should have prepared you before you saw that.’ He raked a hand through his close-cropped hair and looked at her like a man about to walk the plank. ‘Say something, anything, please … put me out of my misery.’

‘It’s beautiful.’ She wouldn’t meet his eyes, still overwhelmed at the carnality so evident in his vision of her. ‘I’ve never been painted before. I’m just surprised at how erotic it seemed.’

‘Why are you surprised? You are erotic, Bridget.’

‘Hardly!’ she whipped her head up to look at him, speaking louder than she’d intended, but his statement had shocked her. The last adjective she’d ever apply to herself was erotic.

He must have seen the shock on her face, because he smiled at her. It was almost tender.

‘I have no idea why you don’t see yourself as sexy, but you are. From your brain all the way down to your perfectly-painted toes. Everything about you is erotic as hell. You get me hard in the same breath that you intrigue me with some thought you just spoke.’

She turned her eyes away and flushed even deeper at the mention of him getting hard over her. She was no prude, but she wasn’t used to men so casually discussing sexual things with her.

He didn’t say anything else, but he did shift until he was sitting more closely beside her. She could feel the heat from his skin through the jeans he wore. The cotton of his T-shirt did nothing to mask it either. A soft breeze washed over them and she could smell the light, woodsy scent of the soap he used. Her entire body was instantly attuned to his.

She saw his hand move but was still surprised when he gently tipped her chin up to look at him. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting, but the depth of the desire she saw in his face was not it. She responded almost violently. Her nipples sprang to life, hardening and tingling against the simple cotton of her bra. She went liquid at her core and her heart rate kicked up a notch.

‘I want to kiss you, Bridget. Hell, let’s be real, I want to do a whole hell of a lot more than that, but I want to start with kissing you.’

His eyes had deepened to an almost gunmetal grey with lust. She was mesmerised by his obvious desire for her, by the touch of his fingers on her chin, by the scent of his body so close to hers. She didn’t bother reaching for words, she just nodded.

He leaned in and brushed his lips across hers. They were warm, and soft. As he deepened the kiss, licking into her mouth, she could feel the slight rasp of stubble from where he’d shaved earlier that day. His tongue leisurely explored her mouth. No crevice went without tending, but he didn’t force his attention on her.

His hand ran gently up her body, stopping briefly to cup her breast. He lingered but a moment, as if testing the weight and shape, before moving up her body. She luxuriated in the feel of him. The soft invasion of his tongue in her mouth was both foreign and familiar, throwing her even further off kilter.

She moaned and leaned into him, bringing one hand to rest on his thigh, which flexed under her fingers. Her blood was thrumming through her veins and she felt her body tuning to him. Any lingering embarrassment over the portrait was forgotten as she gave herself up to his kiss.

She could kiss him for ever.

Connor brought his hand to the side of her neck and exerted gentle pressure to lean her backwards. At the same time, he turned and subtly shifted his body to cover hers.

She didn’t think. She simply reacted. Her knee connected with his balls and he exploded back from her, curling into the foetal position with a sharp cry.

‘Connor!’ She scrambled to her hands and knees as realisation sank in. ‘Oh God! I’m sorry. I’m sorry!’

Hot tears began to run down her face and she chanted her apology over and over. He wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were clamped closed and he rocked back and forth, the pain evident on his face.

It was time to face facts. There was no use pretending any more. She should never have come.

He was going to puke. Lying there, huddled in a ball, Connor was going to lose his lunch. How in the hell did he go from kissing a beautiful, sexy woman to holding his nuts and praying for relief? The ache was spreading out from his groin and settling in his stomach, causing him the most excruciating pain mixed with the most severe nausea he’d ever experienced.

He panted through the pain.

She was saying something, but he couldn’t make it out. He honestly didn’t care at that particular moment. He would care. He would demand an explanation, but right then, he just wanted the contents of his stomach to stay where they were.

Long moments passed where the nausea slowly receded, the pain became a dull ache, and his hearing cleared so that he heard more than the rushing of his own blood.

‘Stop,’ he groaned, ‘s’OK.’

He was slurring his words. It wasn’t OK, but she was crying and that was tearing his gut up again. He didn’t want her to cry.

‘Stop, please.’ At least he sounded more human that time.

‘Are you OK?’ she asked. Her voice wobbled and she sniffled before reaching for a napkin and blowing her nose.

‘No –’ he wasn’t going to lie ‘– but I will be.’

Slowly, painfully, he pushed himself up to a sitting position, moving to lean his back against the tree trunk to remove any pressure from his balls.

‘I am so sorry, Connor.’ She looked pitiful. Her green eyes were drenched and there were tear trails down her porcelain skin.

‘What the hell happened?’ It was still hard to speak normally considering his balls were throbbing, but he needed to know what just happened.

‘It wasn’t you. You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s just that –’ She broke off and, looking away, began tearing apart the napkin she was holding. ‘It’s just that there are some things I just can’t do.’

‘You can’t kiss me?’

‘No, it’s not that.’ She balled up the wreckage of the napkin. ‘It was the way you held my neck and tried to lay me down.’

‘So you can’t have your neck touched or lie down to kiss me?’

‘Right, well, I just can’t have you on top of me like that.’

‘So I can touch your neck, but not lie on top of you?’ His head was starting to hurt as much as his balls. She wasn’t making sense.

‘No, what I mean is –’ Her brow creased and new tears threatened. ‘It’s just that –’

Connor was losing his patience. He liked her, but this was the second time she’d gone physical on him. He wasn’t trying to get involved with a crazy person.

‘OK.’ He groaned a little as he sat forward and his bruised nuts rubbed against the cotton of his boxers. ‘Tell you what. Let’s call it a day. I don’t know why you lose it with me the way you do, but clearly this was not meant to be.’

‘I was raped, Connor.’

He’d begun to rise, only to fall back when her words registered.

As if in slow motion, he turned to face her. She wasn’t looking at him. Her tension was obvious in the balled fists resting in her lap and the corded muscles standing out along her neck.

Hypocritically, his own tension drained. It was like having the answer to a riddle you didn’t even know you had to solve. It explained why she’d reacted so violently to being startled. And it certainly explained her fighting him when he’d taken a posture that effectively trapped her.