Page 181 of Tamed By Her Touch

“Maybe that was part of how he got away with it.”

Maera nodded slowly.

“Perhaps. The idea of a man who doesn’t love his wife is unknown here on Titus Four. I don’t understand how Sendar could grow to hate his goddess enough to kill her.” Then her physician’s instincts seemed to reassert themselves. She turned abruptly toward Clair and Kaelus. “Enough. Both of you require medical attention immediately.”

They were taken directly to a medical facility built into one of the neighboring structures, and within minutes Clair found herself seated on a floating diagnostic bed while a scanner passed slowly from her head to her feet.

Kaelus was on another bed only a few yards away, shirtless now while Varell and two physicians treated his shoulder.

The blaster burn looked horrific to Clair—a charred groove carved across the heavy muscle near his collarbone, though apparently it had missed the major vessels and nerves. One of the physicians sealed the damaged tissue with a shimmering gel and some kind of regenerative light, but Clair couldn’t stop watching Kaelus’s face. He remained stoic through the entire procedure, jaw clenched, though every so often she felt a distant pulse of pain that didn’t seem to belong to her.

That was becoming extremely difficult to ignore.

“You felt that, didn’t you?” Clair asked suddenly.

Kaelus looked at her.

“Felt what?”

“When they treated your shoulder with the gel—it burned, didn’t it?”

His expression became carefully blank.

“I’m fine—my pain is not unbearable.”

“That isn’t what I meant,” Clair said.

He nodded.

“I know.”

“Then answer me,” she insisted.

He shook his head.

“We have more immediate concerns.”

Clair narrowed her eyes.

“You are absolutely hiding something from me!”

Kaelus looked away, refusing to meet her eyes. To Clair, that alone was practically a confession. Something had definitely changed between them since they’d had sex—but what?

Before she could press him more, Maera came over carrying a crystal display filled with biological readings.

“Clair, your scans show no serious injury,” she said gently. “You do have some, ah, internal bruising and minor tissue irritation…” Her eyes flickered to Kaelus and back again. “But that should heal naturally within a few days. Other than that, your blood pressure is lower than I would like, probably from exhaustion, and you are mildly dehydrated.”

Clair nodded.

“I can live with that. Is there anything else?”

“As a matter of fact, there is.” Maera brought up another set of readings. “What interests me more is the biochemical analysis I ran on both of you.”

That got Clair’s attention immediately.

“What? What do you mean?”

“Let me show you.”