Page 51 of Tamed By Her Touch

Clair laughed.

“Fine. I have plenty for you. But what are you going to call me?”

“I will call you Clair. It is less formal than Doctor Donovan and should suffice,” he said.

She shook her head.

“Nope. Too normal.”

“It is your name,” he pointed out.

“That doesn’t matter,” Clair told him. “If we're supposed to look madly in love, you need to call me something affectionate.”

Kaelus raked a hand through his hair.

“Fine,” he said at last. “There is a word in the Kindred Mother Tongue which comes to mind when I think of you.”

Clair perked up at once.

“What word?”

He hesitated, then finally murmured,

“Lissa'ra.”

Clair tried it carefully and found she liked the way the alien word rolled off her tongue.

“Lissa'ra. What does it mean?” she asked.

Kaelus's gaze slid toward her.

“Litte, precious one.”

For a moment Clair forgot how to breathe. Then she recovered and frowned.

“Little? Excuse me, I am not little.”

Kaelus raised one dark eyebrow.

“You are little to me,” he pointed out.

His gaze moved slowly over her, from the top of her curly head down over her full breasts and hips before returning to her face.

“You are barely more than half my size,” he went on. “You’re delicate and small and soft and so little I can lift you with one arm.”

“You don’t need to sound so pleased about it,” Clair said.

She meant for her words to come out sounding dry and sarcastic…instead her voice was breathy. What was wrong with her?

“I am merely stating a fact,” Kaelus said.

“Well, I'm five-foot-four,” Clair said. “That's not abnormally short.”

“You are little to me,” Kaelus repeated. “Little and soft and fragile—which is why I feel so protective of you and the reason I didn’t want us to go on this mission.”

There was something about the deep, quiet way he spoke that made Clair clench her thighs together. So he felt protective of her? He’d never said that before—not right out, anyway.

She swallowed hard, trying to play it off.