What would it be like to wrap her arms around him, to smell his hair, run her fingers through those curls?
“Yes. It is.” He smiled. “This will hurt very little, and I don’t need to cuff both your hands.”
He sat, then efficiently inserted the first of the electrodes. After a minute or two of watching him work on her leg, Claire found calmness settling over her. The way he focused on her treatment and nothing else left her free to watch his every move without fear of being watched in turn.
The treatment over, Theo packed away the machine and its parts.
He took her hand in his, and kissed the palm—a simple possession of her hand. She wanted to pull away, and not, wanted that kiss again. The room vanished, and there remained only his hold on her hand, his gray eyes, the drumming of her heart.
“Claire?”
“Yes?” she asked huskily.
“May I have your permission to court you?”
A lightning strike might have had less effect. She stopped breathing and stared at him, knowing a complete dunce could see her reaction.
He ran a finger lightly from palm to wrist to arm. “If you don’t speak, I’ll take that as a yes.”
She swallowed past the dryness in her throat. “Why? I’m your prisoner, not your—”
“Lover?” He raised an eyebrow, and her cheeks heated. “I can’t free you yet, Claire. I don’t know enough about you. Let me into your world so I can decide what to do with you.”
She laughed bitterly. “You wouldn’t like my world at all. You’re mocking me. I’m a frankenstruct. You don’t court a frankenstruct!”
“I do what I like. You’re putting yourself down. I won’t have that. You are human, Claire, and I can see I have a job to do here in convincing you of this. Answer my question, please. May I court you?”
She stared. He has a job to do… For some reason that scared her more than anything else he’d said. She gathered her thoughts, acutely aware of how he still hung on to her hand.
“I can tell you about myself without you courting me.” She shivered, though no breeze touched the room.
“True.”
He agreed. The fluttering in her stomach subsided. Courting? She vaguely remembered notes about it. Do I dare ask?
“Um. What exactly do you mean by courting?” She had a hunch it wouldn’t be simple or innocent or confined to merely kissing and exchanging compliments. Where he’d drawn the line on her palm, she couldn’t stop feeling frissons of warmth—as if he’d dipped his finger in some unknown magic.
“Courting is a social ritual, where two people find out about each other. The boundaries vary.” Though his words were oh so factual, with his fingertip he traced delicious looping curves on her wrist. “In some countries it stops at talking and kissing. In others…the couple may go further.” He raised an eyebrow.
He was daring her—daring her to ask how far courting went here. In the face of his amused stare, her courage fled.
“Have you ever been kissed, Claire?”
She clenched her hands. All she could think was Inkline. Inkline making her stand there, slapping her, the pain. Slowly she pulled everything back into place, shoved away the memory of humiliation, and focused on the quiet man who sat by her bed, stroking her hand and uncurling her fingers.
“Yes. I have.”
A line creased between his eyes. “But it’s not something you liked. I can see that.”
She looked to where June sat, except the machine blocked her view.
“June is discreet. Forget she’s there. Kissing should be pleasurable.” He slowly lowered his head and pressed his lips to her palm again, then to her wrist.
“Would you like me to show you?”
What a question! But he wasn’t making her do it. She had a choice. With Inkline and the other trainers, it had been degrading and almost rape. Kissing for pleasure was something lovers did, and for a flustering moment she imagined herself in Theo’s bed, their limbs entwined. Oh my.
Where had that come from? She’d seen two pleasure slaves demonstrate the sexual act, but she’d not actually done it, and…
She blinked. Moisture beaded on her brow. He hadn’t moved since he’d asked her his excruciating question. Serenity radiated from him, like he had all the time in the world to wait for her answer.
“Yes,” she whispered. Her heart fluttered like a lantern flame caught in a wild wind.
“Tell me if you want me to stop, Claire, and I will.”
He rose from the chair so he could reach her, and then he pressed those firm lips on her wrist again. He looked up at her in between each kiss as he advanced, inch by inch, up her arm. Tingles washed up and through her body like a slow, inevitable tide. They rose up her arm to her lips, lingering and swirling like the last shallow wave on the beach, over her nipples, her stomach… She could refuse him—she held tight on to that thought—then the tingling reached her groin. She closed her eyes at that, reveling in the awakening sensation.