The Professional Cuddler's Circuit
A Touch Therapy Romance

About this book:

Julian Vance can engineer a glove that mimics the texture of a golden retriever's ear, but he can't program a vest that feels like a human hug—because he hasn't been touched in two years, four months, and eleven days. His solution: hire Clara Bennett, a certified professional cuddler with a background in occupational therapy and a Terms of Service longer than his software license agreements, to wear his sensor-laced compression shirt and hold him for science. Strictly platonic. Strictly data-driven. Absolutely no variables unaccounted for.

Clara sees right through his clinical framing. Where Julian sees pressure gradients and thermal transfer, she sees a man who's built a forty-thousand-dollar life jacket because he forgot how to ask for a hand to hold. As their weekly sessions blur the line between calibration and connection, the algorithm starts picking up signals no schematic anticipated: the weight of a leaned shoulder, the cadence of shared breath, the terrifying, exhilarating noise of a heart opening.

*The Professional Cuddler's Circuit* is a smart, tender romance about the difference between simulated contact and the real thing—where the hardest hardware problem isn't the suit, but the man inside it. Perfect for readers who love *The Rosie Project* meets *Normal People*, with a hero who speaks in Python and a heroine who rewrites his operating system one hug at a time.