23. Kaelus #3
Kaelus shut those thoughts down brutally. No. They couldn’t do that again. They were getting too close.
He helped her into the nightgown instead.
The task was unexpectedly intimate despite its innocence. He gathered the fabric and slipped it over her head, then carefully guided her arms through the openings. Her curls caught beneath the neckline, and he gently freed them, arranging the curly spirals around her shoulders.
Clair let him dress her and said nothing—she only looked up at him. For one dangerous moment, neither of them spoke. She looked soft and sleepy and beautiful.
My wife, Kaelus thought. No. His pretend wife. The distinction felt like a wound in his heart made by a dull knife.
Kaelus pulled the covers back.
“Bed time.”
Clair gave him an amused look.
“Yes, Doctor Kaelus.”
She climbed beneath the blankets and settled onto her side.
Kaelus stood beside the bed, hesitating. He could sleep on the floor, he told himself—he probably should. After everything that happened tonight, distance would be the wisest choice.
But Clair looked at the empty space beside her. Then she looked at him.
“Are you coming to bed?”
It was such a simple question…and such a dangerous one.
“Yes,” Kaelus heard himself saying before he even thought.
He stripped down to his undergarments, deliberately facing away from her, then slid beneath the covers.
He intended to remain on his own side—he truly did. But the moment he settled onto the mattress, Clair moved toward him.
Not seductively—she was no temptress—just a curvy human woman looking for comfort and warmth. She simply curled into his side as though it was the most natural thing in the universe and rested her head against his chest.
Kaelus stopped breathing for several heartbeats. Should he ask her to scoot away? To go back to her side of the bed?
Then Clair sighed. Her body relaxed against his own much larger frame and his resistance crumbled.
He wrapped one arm around her and she shifted closer, sliding one knee over his thigh.
Kaelus closed his eyes. Gods help him. He put his other arm around her too and pulled her close.
Clair made a tiny, contented sound and tucked her face beneath his chin. Within minutes her breathing deepened and she was asleep.
Kaelus, however, was not.
He lay staring into the darkness with Clair wrapped securely in his arms and felt more content than he had ever felt in his life.
That feeling of peace and contentment frightened him more than anything. He had spent decades without this—without a mate—without anyone waiting for him at the end of the day. He had convinced himself he did not need such things because wanting what he could never have was pointless.
And now Clair had shown him exactly what he had been missing.
Not merely sex and desire. This—a warm body curled trustingly against his.
Soft breathing in the darkness. Someone to protect…
someone to care for…someone whose happiness mattered more than his own.
A woman whose habits had become woven so completely through his existence that he could no longer imagine returning to the orderly silence which had once satisfied him.
His gaze lowered to her sleeping face. She was so beautiful—her long lashes fanned out on her cheekbones and her lips looked soft and kissable, even in sleep.
Kaelus wanted to kiss her forehead but somehow, he resisted. But then, because no one could see him and because he had apparently become weak where this little human was concerned, he lowered his mouth and pressed the softest possible kiss into her curls.
“I wish you were mine,” he whispered again.
Clair slept on. Perhaps that was for the best—because if she had been awake, he might have told her everything.
He might have admitted that he wanted to wake beside her every morning…
that he wanted her coffee machine contaminating his pristine laboratory counter forever.
He might have said that he wanted to hear her call him “sweetie-pie” and “honey-bun” and every other ridiculous human endearment she could invent.
That he wanted her to place an ownership band on his arm and mean it—not because Titus Four required one, but because he would gladly belong to her.
He wanted Clair Donovan for his bride—his real bride—his Bonded mate. And that was the one thing he could never have.
Kaelus tightened his arms around her just a little. Tomorrow he would be careful. He would restore the boundaries between them and make himself remember that this mission was temporary and Clair deserved the freedom to return to the life she had chosen once it was over.
But tonight she was sleeping in his arms, and he could pretend she belonged there—that she was really his.
And as exhaustion finally pulled him down toward sleep, Kaelus allowed himself one impossible fantasy—that there would never be a tomorrow when he had to let her go, that the woman nestled against his heart truly belonged there, and that somehow, against every law of Hybrid biology, he might be permitted to hold his wife like this forever.