Page 17 of Tamed By Her Touch

Clair wanted the words to come out light and breezy—instead she was almost panting. It was hard work clinging like a spider monkey to the slick metal shelves! She’d never been any good at the rock wall at the gym, back when she went. The instructor had said something about her center of gravity being too low—though Clair suspected it was more that she was just too heavy to climb very far.

Suddenly, she decided she would get the plant formula later. For now, she was just going to get down off these shelves as gracefully and quickly as she could.

But when she reached her foot down to find the lower shelf, she couldn’t reach it. She was stuck there on the shelf with one foot flopping around, unable to get down to the ground without hurting herself. She was afraid if she just jumped, she’d land wrong and twist an ankle—which was exactly what had happened the last time she’d tried the climbing wall at the gym and the reason she hadn’t tried it since.

Then she heard Kaelus’s deep voice again, this time directly beneath her.

“Let go of the shelves,” he said, and she could hear the frown in his voice.

“I…I can’t,” Clair panted. “I…I’m too high up!”

“You humans are the most ridiculous creatures,” he growled impatiently. “I don’t expect you to jump to the ground. Just let go and I’ll catch you.”

“You…you will?”

Clair risked a glance over her shoulder and saw that he was standing there with his arms out. God, he was serious!

“Yes, I will,” he said, frowning. “Now let go.”

“I can’t ask you to catch me!” Clair protested. “You’ll hurt your back!”

Visions of her landing on him and squashing him flashed through her head. Her ex hadn’t even been able to lift her enough to carry her over the threshold when they were married and she weighed considerably more now than she had then!

“Dr. Donovan, are you saying I’m too weak to catch a female?” he growled, raising an eyebrow at her.

“Of course I’m not saying you’re weak!” Clair exclaimed impatiently. Her arms were trembling now with the effort of holding onto the damn shelves. “I’m just saying, I’m not the kind of ‘female’ you normally see getting caught say, in a RomCom or a romance novel. I mean, I’m not exactly skinny, you know?”

“I’m well aware of your generous curves—they distract me daily when I’m trying to work,” he said dryly. “But please believe me when I say that I can lift many times your weight—I do so during my daily work out at the ship’s gym all the time.”

Clair couldn’t hold on any longer. Her fingers were sweating and slipping on the slick metal shelves. But she still didn’t want to play the damsel in distress for her irritating lab-partner.

“I can’t just—” she began but her words ended in a scream as she lost her grip and fell backwards.

She didn’t fall far. As he had promised, Kaelus caught her without any apparent effort on his part at all. He didn’t even make any kind of grunt of effort, and he certainly didn’t remark on how she “needed to lose a few pounds” as her ex always had when he tried to pick her up for some reason.

“Oh my God!” Clair gasped and threw her arms around the big Hybrid’s neck instinctively. For a moment, she still felt like she was falling and flashes of landing badly at the gym and nearly breaking her ankle rushed through her mind.

To her surprise, Kaelus didn’t rush to put her down right away. Instead, he cradled her to him for a moment and rumbled,

“It’s all right—I’ve got you.”

It was his warm, spicy scent that overcame her momentary panic—it invaded her senses and made Clair realize she was clinging to the male who had been making her life miserable for months. God, he was going to be insufferable now, telling her how to behave in the lab! So why did he have to smell so good? His scent was better than any cologne she’d ever smelled and once again, it seemed to draw her to him.

Feeling irritated with herself, Clair let go of his neck and pushed away as much as she could—though he was still holding her in his arms.

“You can put me down now,” she said stiffly. “Er, thank you for catching me,” she added, since it seemed rude not to thank him.

“You are welcome,” Kaelus said, making no move to let her go. “What in the Seven Hells were you doing up there, anyway? You’re damn lucky those shelves are bolted to the wall or you would have pulled the one you were climbing down on your head.”

“I’m well aware of that,” Clair said stiffly—though to be honest, she hadn’t been thinking anything about how the shelves were secured to the wall. “But I needed to get something on the top shelf and that was the only way I could reach it.”

“What did you need?” he asked, frowning.

It wasn’t lost on Clair that he was still holding her, but she pointed anyway at the bottle of plant growth formula.

“That—the growth formula. My T’chian tremble vine is nearly dead. I thought maybe feeding it would help.”

“I see.” And, shifting her weight to his left arm, he reached up with his right and easily lifted the bottle she’d been fighting to get off the top shelf. He didn’t even have to stand on his tiptoes or stretch very far, Clair noted enviously. Also, he was holding her entire weight with one arm, and he wasn’t even acting like it was difficult. It was as though she weighed no more than a doll or a pillow—which was most certainly not the case.