Page 116 of Tamed By Her Touch

“She already has you carrying her belongings and kneeling at her feet.”

“Those were your customs, not hers,” Kaelus pointed out.

“But you went along with them,” Sendar said. “Tell me, customs or not, would you truly allow a woman to own you?”

Kaelus looked at him. The image of Clair fastening the band around his arm came back with disturbing clarity. Her small fingers against his skin. Her brown eyes looking up into his.

“You don’t mind being owned by me?” she’d said in that soft, teasing voice that drove him crazy.

His answer then had been evasive. This time it wasn’t.

“If Clair truly wished to own me in order to claim me as her mate,” he said slowly, “I believe I would consider it an honor.”

The words startled him as much as they appeared to startle Sendar. For a moment the other male’s face went completely blank. Then he laughed.

“How very Titus Four of you,” he sneered.

Kaelus scowled.

“I am Kindred.”

“So you keep reminding me.”

Sendar turned away.

“My people did not always think this way, you know,” he said. “There are scholars who believe our culture developed because our males became chemically dependent upon our women.”

Kaelus’s attention sharpened.

“Chemically dependent how?”

Sendar was suddenly evasive.

“It was only a theory. Nothing has been proven.”

“That didn’t sound like an unproven theory to me,” Kaelus growled.

Sendar shrugged.

“Women consume substances males generally do not. They produce different hormones…different metabolites. Perhaps over generations our males learned that staying close to females kept the worst effects of the virus under control.”

Kaelus thought immediately of the unidentified compound in every male blood sample.

“Then your males are not enslaved.”

Sendar frowned at him.

“No?”

“No,” Kaelus said. “They are being treated.”

Sendar’s mouth twisted into a sneer.

“By women,” he spat out the word as though it tasted bad in his mouth.

Kaelus nodded.

“Yes. By women.”