‘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.
Gently, he lifted one of her hands and smoothed out her fingers so he could take her hand in his.
‘Can you tell me about it?’ he asked. When she hesitated, he said, ‘Please.’
She didn’t know if she could tell him. She didn’t want to see his face change. To see the pity and have him begin to treat her differently. They all treated her differently after they knew.
‘Bridget, if you don’t feel comfortable telling me right now, that’s fine. I understand. We don’t know each other very well yet.’
There he went again with his compassion and willingness to let her take the lead. Squeezing his hand, she shook her head, which he mistook as an indicator that she didn’t want to talk and began to pull his hand away.
Squeezing it tighter, she took a deep breath and began, ‘I was in college.’ Letting go of his hand, she smoothed her capris and looked off into the distance as she continued. ‘I was returning some notes to a friend when a guy I’d been kind of flirting with invited me into his dorm room. I went in and the rest, as they say, is history. He raped me.’
There was more to the story. Infinitely more. But she just couldn’t go there. She’d never told anyone the full story. It was bad enough she had to live with it; she wasn’t going to allow anyone else to judge her for it.
Bridget jumped when Connor took her hand and brought it to his mouth, kissing the back of her hand.
‘I am so, so sorry that happened to you,’ he murmured against her skin.
She squeezed his hand reassuringly. ‘It was a long time ago.’
‘What happened to him?’
A wave of bitterness flooded Bridget.
‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing.’ She pulled her hand from Connor’s and began to pluck at the blanket again. ‘I never told anyone.’
‘Why not?’
‘The same reason why so many women don’t say anything. I was ashamed. And I wasn’t willing to be vilified on the stand. So I just moved on.’
Shame coloured the bitterness, but she pushed it away. What was done was done.
Connor didn’t try to take her hand back, but he did move closer and put a gentle arm around her shoulder. She stiffened. Here it came. This was the part where he stopped looking at her like a woman and began to treat her like a victim.
The last thing she should be treated as was a victim, but how could she convey that to him without telling him everything? How could she get him to understand without losing his respect?
Every single time she’d told a man she dated about the rape it was like this. She went from being a sexy, desirable woman whom they could barely keep their hands off to a victim. Someone they treated like spun glass. Instead of embracing her and kissing the breath out of her, they kissed her like she’d shatter if they pressed too hard.
She may have been raped, but she was still a woman and she hated the way men treated her once they knew. She hated more, though, that there were some very real things she needed them to be aware of. It could be hard to have passionate, animal sex when she tensed every time they touched her neck, or they had to remember not to lie on top of her.
Each time, she eventually gave up. She’d lie quietly, doing her best to not react to anything they inadvertently did. They’d fuck her just as gently and she’d pretend to get off. Inevitably, the relationship would sour, distance would grow, and she’d amicably end their dalliance. All of her serious boyfriends were now happily married and she was going on her fifth year without any kind of meaningful relationship in her life besides her two best girlfriends.
She’d long ago given up on finding a man who could tread that fine line with her between truly uninhibited sex the way she fantasised and being mindful of her past. Connor brought out the deeply sexual woman in her. That much was obvious, but she highly doubted he’d be any different than the others now.
Back stiff as a rod, she waited for the inevitable.
Chapter Eight
Fury pumped through Connor’s veins. His hands itched to tear apart the bastard who’d hurt her. He hated men who preyed on woman. There were so many chicks who would fuck you willingly that it was completely uncalled for to take it from anyone. The evidence of the scars left behind was obvious.
Bridget was a gorgeous, dynamic woman who now sat as if she were about to be executed. That she had a scar like this to deal with enraged him as much for the shame he saw in her eyes as for the psychological damage that slimy bastard had clearly left behind.
Right now, she sat stiff as a board beside him and he was at a complete loss. Should he hug her? Should he leave her be? Take her hand? Kiss her? Scream out his frustration.
‘Bridget.’ He left his arm where it was.
‘Hmm?’ She still plucked at the damn blanket.
‘Look at me, will you?’
