Page 55 of Tamed By Her Touch

“Oh…I…I…”

Clair didn’t know what to say. The way he was looking at her and the hot things he was saying were making her feel flustered and breathless.

At last she nodded.

“So once a day—that’s your compromise?”

Kaelus nodded.

“Yes.”

Clair let out a nervous laugh, though she was still feeling breathless.

“All right. Once a day,” she said.

Neither of them looked at the other for the next several minutes. It seemed too dangerous somehow to look into the golden depths of his eyes again. Kaelus seemed to feel that eye contact was dangerous too, because he stared steadily out the viewscreen.

Clair tried to look at her list, though her brain kept replaying the fact that twice a day would be insufficient and how much he wanted to taste her in Kaelus's deep rumbling voice. They had answered all the most important questions, she decided. No way was she going to ask the one about “which is your favorite sexual position.” They were already getting in way too deep.

She put away the tablet and turned toward the viewscreen.

Titus Four was still an hour away, but a bright star gleamed in the distance, surrounded by the faint glow of the system they were approaching.

She had started the questionnaire because she was afraid that she and Kaelus didn't know enough about each other to convincingly pretend they were mates. Now she had an entirely different problem.

Because somewhere in the course of asking about favorite foods and sleeping habits and ridiculous pet names, Clair had discovered that Kaelus knew what time she woke up, how she took her coffee, what she ate when she was upset, what she did when she was nervous, and exactly how her face changed when she was excited about her work.

And she knew more about him than she'd realized too. Maybe pretending to be mated wasn't going to be the difficult part after all.

Maybe the difficult part was going to be remembering that they weren't.

9

KAELUS

Kaelus was relieved when they reached Titus Four and the com-link squawked a warning at him that someone was hailing them.

“Hello, friend,” a warm, mellow male voice greeted him when he opened a communications channel. “Welcome to Titus Four. May I know your name and planet of origin?”

“This is Doctor Kaelus and his mate, Doctor Clair Donovan,” Kaelus said. “We have come from the Kindred Mother Ship by permission of your Council of Elders to study the Savage Syndrome.”

“Ah, you mean the Love Virus,” the voice replied to him. “For so we call it here.”

Clair leaned forward.

“Why do you call it that?” she asked eagerly. “This is Doctor Donovan, Kaelus’s mate,” she added.

“Ah, there is much to discuss when it comes to the virus that infects us all to our benefit and gratitude,” the mellow voice replied. “Please, land at the coordinates I am sending you. I will meet you and your mate there and then we may talk to our hearts’ content.”

“We can’t wait to meet you,” Clair said sweetly.

Kaelus felt a burst of possessive fury rush through him and then realized what he was feeling. What was wrong with him? It seemed that talking about being mated to Clair had almost made him feel like she was really his.

Stop, he ordered himself. She’s not yours and besides, she’s only being friendly.

And even if she wanted to be his, she never could be. Hybrid Kindred could almost never Bond a bride to them. It was one reason Kaelus had decided to bury himself in his work and forget about women completely—what was the point of longing for something he could never have?

So he pushed the thought of Clair being his aside and concentrated on landing the long-range shuttle at the coordinates he had been given.