Page 68 of Tamed By Her Touch

“Indeed I am.” Sendar’s smile widened and his metallic eyes raked Clair up and down in a way Kaelus didn’t like one fucking bit.

Varell clearly was pretending not to notice the tension between them.

“It is settled then,” he said. “You will stay with Maera and me for five days. During that time, Doctor Sendar can assist you with whatever preliminary research is permitted. At the end of the fifth day, Doctor Kaelus will take the Vow of the Goddess.”

“I suppose that will be acceptable. Er, I mean, is that acceptable to you my…my goddess?” Kaelus made himself ask as he looked down at Clair.

She was still sitting comfortably in his lap—too comfortably. Her hand rested on his arm and her hair brushed his throat in a most distracting way.

“Sounds good to me.” She gave him a knowing smile. “Well, big fella, looks like you’re going back to school.”

Kaelus growled and Clair patted his arm.

“Don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll make a wonderful husband once they train you properly.”

Kaelus glared at her. It was ridiculous to think he must be trained as a husband in order to perform life-saving research! And yet, there didn’t seem to be anything they could do about it.

That worried him far more than Varell’s ridiculous rules.

Because despite everything Kaelus had told himself—despite every reason he had for keeping his distance from Clair—the idea of spending the next five days holding her, feeding her, caring for her, and learning how to treat her like a goddess did not sound nearly as unpleasant as it should have.

In fact, it sounded dangerously close to something he wanted.

11

CLAIR

Clair stood in front of the viewer in the guest suite’s enormous bathing chamber and wondered why in the world she hadn’t packed more sensible sleepwear.

The viewer itself was nothing like an ordinary Earth mirror. Instead of glass, it appeared to be a sheet of pale silver liquid flowing continuously down the wall, though when Clair looked into it, her reflection was perfectly clear. Every once in a while the surface rippled gently and gave off a faint pearlescent glow which made her skin look smoother and her curly auburn hair considerably more cooperative than it usually was.

The rest of the room was just as alien and luxurious. The bathing pool was sunken directly into the floor and lined with smooth violet stones that warmed automatically when she stepped near them, while the shower was more like standing inside a warm misting cloud than getting sprayed with water.

Strange blue-green vines grew along one wall, opening tiny luminous flowers whenever the humidity rose, and the floor beneath Clair’s bare feet looked like thick emerald grass, though it was far softer than any lawn she had ever walked across. Every time she shifted her weight, the tiny silky blades seemed to curl around her feet and massage her soles.

Honestly, if pretending to be married to Kaelus didn’t kill her, she might ask Commander Sylvan if the Kindred could establish permanent diplomatic relations with Titus Four just so she could come back here for a vacation, she thought.

Unfortunately, the nightgown she was wearing was doing nothing to make her feel relaxed.

Clair turned sideways in front of the viewer and frowned at her reflection. The gown was made of incredibly soft, pale rose fabric that fell to just above her knees and floated around her curves when she moved. It wasn’t exactly indecent—at least she hadn’t thought so when she packed it—but the material was extremely thin and had a tendency to cling to her breasts and hips in a way that made it obvious she wasn’t wearing anything underneath except a pair of underpants.

But it wasn’t totally the gown’s fault that certain things were so…visible. Because she was also wearing the float dots Kat had talked her into trying.

Clair had laughed when her friend first showed them to her. The tiny ruby-colored gems were no bigger than pencil erasers and adhered beneath the curve of each breast. Apparently they generated a very small anti-gravity field which lifted the breast tissue just enough to make even large, heavy breasts stand up perkily without any kind of bra at all.

As a woman who had been hauling around a very generous set of boobs since puberty, Clair had initially been skeptical…then she'd tried them and found out they were amazing.

No underwire digging into her ribs…no straps sawing into her shoulders…no industrial-strength contraption that felt like it had been designed by the Army Corps of Engineers just to keep her boobs north of her belly button. Just a subtle lift—as though an invisible set of hands was holding her breasts up and making them look as perky as they had been many years ago back in college.

Kat had laughed when Clair called them life-changing but Clair hadn’t been kidding. She had privately decided they might be one of the greatest technological advances the Kindred had ever brought to Earth.

The only problem was that while the float dots lifted her breasts beautifully, they did absolutely nothing to hide her nipples. In fact, having her boobs look so perky actually made her tender peaks more prominent. And right now, thanks to the cool air of the bathing chamber, they were standing out very obviously beneath the thin pink fabric of her nightgown.

“Terrific,” Clair muttered to her reflection. “Absolutely terrific.”

She crossed her arms over her breasts which helped…some. But she couldn’t exactly walk around with her arms clamped over her chest all night without looking ridiculous.

Besides, Kaelus was the only one who would be seeing her, and she had been working beside the big Hybrid for months.