Rainlashed

An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

www.ellorascave.com Rainlashed ISBN # 1-4199-0347-0 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Rainlashed Copyright© 2006 Leda Swann Edited by Briana St. James. Cover art by Philip Fuller. Electronic book Publication: January 2006 This book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.

Warning: The following material contains graphic sexual content meant for mature readers. This story has been rated E –rotic by a minimum of three independent reviewers. Ellora’s Cave Publishing offers three levels of Romantica™ reading entertainment: S (S-ensuous), E (E-rotic), and X (X-treme). S-ensuous love scenes are explicit and leave nothing to the imagination. E-rotic love scenes are explicit, leave nothing to the imagination, and are high in volume per the overall word count. In addition, some E-rated titles might contain fantasy material that some readers find objectionable, such as bondage, submission, same sex encounters, forced seductions, and so forth. E-rated titles are the most graphic titles we carry; it is common, for instance, for an author to use words such as “fucking”, “cock”, “pussy”, and such within their work of literature. X-treme titles differ from E-rated titles only in plot premise and storyline execution. Unlike E-rated titles, stories designated with the letter X tend to contain controversial subject matter not for the faint of heart.

RAINLASHED Leda Swann

Chapter One His wildest fantasies had come true. The selkies had returned. Iain Argyle, Earl of Stoneleigh, stood behind the rock as still as if he were a stone monument like those that stood in the chapel on the hill behind him. He would not startle them, not yet. Not until he had them in his power and they were unable to escape his clutches. He gazed at them with fierce intent, careless of the cold rain battering his face, drenching his thick cloak and running in icy rivulets down his neck and inside his collar. Once before when he was little more than a boy he had seen them on the shore like they were now, their seal skins set to one side as they washed themselves in the rainwater. Entranced by the sight of so much naked beauty and filled with boyish enthusiasm and foolish naiveté he had strode openly out to greet them. In his simple mindedness he had thought they would welcome him with open arms, perhaps even take him as their playmate. He had wanted little enough from them then. A kiss from each of them—a simple kiss—and he would have been happy to let them go back to the water where they belonged. He had wanted most of all to look at them and perhaps to touch their cool

skin with gentle hands. Just to have touched a pair of naked breasts would have been enough back then, in his heightened state, to have made him come in his pants. Even in his wildest fantasies he had aspired to nothing more. They had wanted no such playmate as he. Robbing him even of one touch of their smooth skin, they had slipped away from him as fast as water disappears into the ground. The sound of mocking laughter as they had swum away from him still burned in his ears, tormenting him even more than the memory of their perfect, naked bodies, shamelessly cavorting in the rain. He was older and wiser now and would not let them escape so easily a second time. Before he saw them return to the ocean again, he would have more than a kiss to remember them by. He would have one of these strange seal women, he would steal her away and make her his own, and he would possess all the secrets of her body. She would belong to him until he tired of her and let her return to her own kind. Over and over again he would take his willing captive, his hungry cock thrusting and pumping away inside her slick body until he had burned out the fruitless passion for these wild sea creatures that had haunted him mercilessly for so many years. With a fierce burst of self-control he tamped down his rising lust. He could not afford to be distracted by the strength of his desire, not when the prize was at last so near to being won. Controlling his fantasies, dampening his need for them to prevent it raging out of control, had never been so hard. They were beautiful. All five of them were enticingly, intoxicatingly beautiful—the most glorious creatures he had ever seen. For they were creatures. He would not call them women. They were creations of the earth and of the sea. They had no souls, no life beyond the one which they now lived, so they could never be fully human. And yet how human they appeared, as they lay over the rocks, chattering in girlish voices, letting the clean, fresh rainwater wash over their naked bodies. They looked for all the world like fresh-faced young lasses barely out of the schoolroom oblivious of the sweet seduction of the bodies and the unquenchable desires they aroused in every man who saw them. The three closest to him were plump and curvy with golden, sun-warmed skin, full breasts tipped with large, pale-brown nipples, soft brown hair between their legs, and well-rounded asses he ached to grasp in both hands as he thrust vigorously into their wet and welcoming pussies. He could hardly tell the three of them apart—they looked enough alike to be triplets—and any one of the three would be delicious enough for his purposes. The three of them together, all of them making love to his body at the same time, competing for his attention, would be even better. An auburn-haired girl sat to one side a little apart from the others. She was slender and smaller than the others, and looked barely out of her girlhood. Pretty as she was, he dismissed her out of hand. She was too young to engage his interest. Lying on her stomach and paddling idly in a rock pool was the last of them. Her hair was darker than the others. Drenched as it was by the steady rain it looked nearly jet black, and was long enough to reach nearly to her waist. Her skin was pale—so pale she looked as though she had never seen the sun—her lips were bright red, and her eyes were dark pools of mystery. She too, was curvy like her companions. Her large, pear-shaped breasts were tipped with tight, pink nipples, the muscles in her thighs well

defined, and her plump ass firm and high. As he watched, she rolled over on to her back, her legs apart, exposing the bush of dark hair between her legs, and a tantalizing glimpse of the wet, pink cunt that lay hidden underneath. His lust notched even higher at the thought of dipping his fingers into her dripping pussy. He did not let his fantasies travel any further than that. The mere sight of her pink flesh had made his cock so hard that it hurt and he was already perilously close to losing his iron self-control. The black-haired selkie’s wanton display had decided him. Out of all five of them, she was the one he wanted. He would have her. He moved his head around infinitely slowly, searching for what he knew he must find, and quickly, if he was to succeed. Ah, there it was. He stifled the cry of triumph that threatened to burst forth from his lips. The pile of skins lying as if discarded on the beach, close to the waterline, was the only sign that they were less than they appeared to be. Those skins rather than the seal women themselves had to be his focus. He would wait all day, and into the night if need be, for the right moment to present itself. There was no point in trying to hold the women. They had already proved to him they were more slippery than eels and could not be held if they chose to escape. Instead he had to capture the skins and use them to control their owners. Once he had secured the skins in his grasp the seal women would be helpless, unable to change back into their seal forms until they wrested the skins away from him. They would have to stay trapped as women for as long as it pleased him—and as women, they would be in his power. They would be under his command, to use as he saw fit. He would barter with them and gain their complete obedience to his every desire in exchange for the hope of one day having their seal skins returned to them. He allowed his lips to curl into a savage grin. That day would be long in coming. They would be his new toys for him to play with as he chose. It would please him to keep them as women for a very long time. Maya stopped idly teasing the anemone in the rock pool and turned over on to her back, luxuriating in the feeling of her body being washed clean by the fresh rainwater. Saltwater was all very well when she was in her seal skin but as soon as she threw it off and took up her human form, she longed most of all for the softness of pure rain water. Human hair and saltwater simply didn’t mix well. “Come help me wash my hair,” she called to the sisters who lay spread out on the rocks in varying poses of abandonment as the warm rain beat down on their bodies. Even she, their closest cousin, couldn’t tell which of them was which. They were rumored even to be able to exchange their sealskins and live in each other’s as happily as they lived in their own but she wasn’t sure if she believed the rumor and, close friends as they were to her, she would not dream of asking them. Such a question was far too personal for a selkie. The bond between a selkie and her seal skin was the strongest bond that could ever be forged—stronger by far than the bond between lovers or even between mother and child. A selkie deprived of her sealskin would most likely wither and die, or at the very most be doomed to live only a half life, without that part of her that gave her freedom and joy and made her life worth the living. A selkie without her seal skin was the

saddest creature in existence. She could not imagine sharing her precious skin with anyone, not even her sister Caity, whom she loved more than any other. “You and your mania for washing,” one of the sisters grumbled, getting up off the rocks and wandering over to her. “You always want to throw off your seal skin in the rain instead of waiting for a sunny day so we can bask in the sunshine and warm our naked bodies on the hot rocks.” Maya watched the sister walking in the rain, the misty droplets beaded on her satiny skin. “You don’t like the water?” “Of course I do,” the sister replied, flicking her wet hair over her shoulder and giving a look of pleasure as it snaked down her naked back. “How could I be a selkie and not love the water? But on days like today I like the sunshine even better, especially when I haven’t lain out in it all winter long. My skin is craving a touch of sunlight.” “The rain will clear soon enough,” Maya replied equably, “and then the sun will come out and you will get to lie in the warmth to your heart’s content.” The sister looked mutinously up at the dark sky with lowering rain clouds that showed no signs of dissipating. “If I didn’t know that you were a true storm-selkie I would mistrust your words.” “Just as well for me then that I am a true storm-selkie, and I never lie about such matters. Indeed I cannot lie about them, as you well know.” She held out her arms beseechingly. “Now come and wash me before the rain stops.” The first sister sank down to her haunches behind Maya’s head and began to comb through the long strands of her hair. After a while the other two sisters gathered around and began to wash her body, gathering handfuls of fresh water from hollows in the rocks and rinsing away the brine of the ocean. The youngest of their group, Caity, shyly joined them in their task, rinsing her with great gentleness. Maya sighed with pleasure as she felt the last vestiges of her seal life begin to slip away. On mornings like these, she could almost imagine what it was like to be only human and to have no seal form. On mornings like these, she found the idea of being a woman and nothing more strangely appealing. Not that she would willingly give up her skin, even at times like these when she felt most human. A frisson of fear snaked up her spine at the thought of losing the other part of herself. She turned her head and gave an anxious look at the seal skins, lying on the sand by the water’s edge. This beach was isolated, and not to a human’s taste—having more rocks than sand and a vicious riptide that would carry any human foolish enough to brave the heavy surf there out to sea. No humans ever came here, they had no need. She had no cause to worry. Her skin was safe enough. The rain had stopped now and a break in the clouds let in a welcome draught of pale sunshine just as she had known it would. She sat up again and shook her head from side to side, spraying Caity and the sisters with water. They squealed and jumped away from her. “Now that I’m clean, I will let the sun come out,” she said solemnly, spoiling the effect with a grin. Just as she spoke, the last of the black clouds covering the sun withdrew, leaving the five of them bathed in warm sunshine. “Bask all you want now.” One of the sisters gave her a delighted kiss on the cheek and the three of them lay on the rocks with every evidence of enjoyment. Caity chose a spot close to Maya and sat there, her arms wrapped around her knees. “Did you really tell the sun that he could come out now?” she asked, her voice filled with reverence.

Maya shook her head. “My powers as a storm-selkie do not stretch that far,” she admitted. “Only the greatest of the storm-selkies can turn the wind and the rain clouds to their will. I can only see the weather coming and know what will happen. I cannot yet change it.” The look of awe on Caity’s face barely dimmed. “Even to foretell the weather is an awesome power.” Maya shrugged. How could she tell the youngster without sounding affected and spoiled that her knowledge of the weather was more painful than not, especially when she lusted with all her heart after the abilities of a true weather shaper. To have the wind and the waves at your command, to smooth the water over like glass so that not even a ripple marred the surface of the ocean, and then to whip it up into huge, frothy waves that crashed furiously on the rocks and then swept back out to sea—that was real power. That was the kind of control over nature and the elements for which she yearned… Her wistful thoughts were replaced by earthier ones when one of the sisters gave a wide yawn and stretched languidly out in the sun. “I begin to feel the need to take another human lover.” She placed her hands on her breasts, squeezing them gently and with every evidence of pleasure. The other sisters followed her example, playing with their breasts, taking them in their hands and pushing them up to their mouths to lick and suck on their own nipples. “This is what I love so much about being in my human skin,” the sister said, her voice turning heavy with desire. “I love the feeling of my own human body, sensitive in so many more places than my seal body is. And most of all I love the touch of a man’s hand on my breasts.” Maya felt her own nipples begin to peak and harden at the thought of a man’s hand on them. She had never taken a human lover before, as all three of the sisters had done many a time since they were old enough to take a man. Her abstinence was not born from prudery. She had simply never considered the act of mating with a human to be worth the risk of capture and she hadn’t believed the sisters’ tales of the abandoned joy there was to be found in the act. Now, however, the sister’s words started a low ache in the pit of her belly. For the first time she wanted a man to touch her, to ease the pain that was building up inside her. The risks the sisters ran to be with a man suddenly made sense to her as they never had before. The thought of taking a human lover suddenly seemed not just dangerous but dangerously enticing. “And not just on my breasts,” a second sister added, her hands moving down over her ribcage and belly to caress her hips and buttocks. “I like a man’s hand to rove everywhere on my body. I like him to take my ass in his hands, to squeeze my cheeks, and to explore the forbidden cleft between them.” She gave a low, guttural moan as she did just that. Maya wriggled uncomfortably around on her own rocky seat, feeling strangely hot and flustered. Beneath her, the rock showed patches of dampness where her juices had started to flow. The thought of taking a human lover, a thought she had never seriously entertained before, was growing more desirable with every word the sisters spoke. “I don’t just want a man’s hands on me,” the third sister chimed in, one of her hands moving down to play in her nest of curls. “I want his hands inside me.” She spread her legs wide apart and arched her back so that her glistening cunt was

wide open to the air. “I want him to put his fingers in my pussy,” she said, dipping two of her fingers into her own cunt and withdrawing them slick with moisture. “And not just his fingers, either. I want him to thrust his hard cock right inside me, right to the entrance of my womb, over and over again. I want to feel every inch of him filling me, stroking me, caressing me, until I cry out with ecstasy under him.” Maya listened to them with growing pleasure as they described in detail what they would like to do to each other, touching themselves all the while. She ran her hands over her own breasts, delighting in the flexibility of her fingers and hands and the smooth feel of her hairless skin. Maybe it was time that she took the plunge and entrusted her seal skin to one of her elderly aunts, who would take good care of it in return for a fresh catch of salmon. She could arrange to be washed up on a lonely beach, close to the hut of a handsome young fisherman. He would “rescue” her and in return she would live with him and make love with him until she tired of being a woman and wanted to return to the sea once more. The first sister continued to play with her breasts. “I want to find a hungry farm boy in the hay shed,” she said greedily, “and have him suckle on my bare breasts as if he could milk me dry.” The second sister giggled at the thought. “I’d feel like a cow, not a human. I want to be washed up in the early morning light on a beach by the hut of a young fisherman and lie there on the sand until he comes to find me. Then, when he kneels down beside me, I want to surprise him by unbuttoning his breeches and taking his limp cock in my mouth. “I want to suck on it until it grows big and hard and the veins are throbbing under my tongue. I want to hear him groan with pleasure and feel him as he spurts come all over my cheeks and chin. Then, as his pleasure shakes him, I’ll slip silently into the water and leave him there to wonder if I was real or just a wet dream.” “I want a blacksmith,” the third sister chimed in. “A huge, burly man with a cock to match. I want him to hammer and pound me on his anvil until I scream with pleasure.” “Then I want to take my farm boy and take off all his clothes until the two of us are lying together naked on the straw. I want him to lick me until I’m dripping wet and on the brink of coming. I want to rub his thick cock all over with my cunt juices until he’s quivering with holding back his come and then I want to take his cock into my ass until he spends there while I rub myself into my own pleasure.” “I want my fisherman to have a brother, just as young and lusty as he is—” “One blacksmith will be enough for whatever I need.” “—I want to have them both on me at once, both competing with each other as to who can pleasure me the most. Both of them will have the biggest cocks you have ever seen, and they will fuck me in every way they can think of, both of them at once—” A flicker of movement in the corner of her eye made Maya turn her head. She caught sight of Caity hunched over on her rock looking red-faced and miserable as the sisters continued their litany of acts they would like to perform with their human lovers. With a resigned sigh at missing the rest of the sisters’ elaborate and graphic fantasies, she got to her feet and held out her hand to the poor girl. “Come with me,” she said to Caity, taking pity on her obvious embarrassment. “You’re too young to be listening to this kind of talk.”

Caity took her hand with evident relief, and the two of them wandered along the shore together until the sisters’ voices disappeared into the muted roar of the waves and the rustle of the wind among the bushes at the edge of the beach. He watched the black-haired selkie pick her way over the rocks hand in hand with the young one, until they were nearly as far away from their skins as he was. The triplets were also engaged in pleasures of their own—their attention occupied enough, he hoped, that they would be slow to react to his presence. He could hardly drag his eyes away from the three of them and even more he hated to interrupt them in their erotic games, but he knew that now was the time to make his move. For all that they moved as quickly on land as eels, he had surprise on his side. Surprise and an overwhelming desire that knew no bounds. The need to capture one of them was so strong in him that he could almost taste it. He had failed once. He would not accept failure a second time. He inched forward a fraction, coming as close to the edge of the rock as he dared, before springing out from behind it and leaping over rocks and sand towards that precious pile of skins on the shore. His ankle twisted painfully on a loose stone but he didn’t slow down or take his eyes off the prize for a moment. Each second dragged on for an eternity as he scrabbled his way towards the culmination of his fantasies. But, fast as he was, the selkies were faster. The instant the first triplet spied him, she sprang to her feet and let out a keening wail, before leaping for her seal skin. The two others followed her example, while the black-haired selkie and her companion sped back along the beach as fast as they could, in a desperate race. The triplets reached their skins and made for the water before he could so much as touch a single whisker of their seal faces. The other two selkies were not so lucky. He reached the last two skins at almost the same time as they did. Both of them reached desperately for their skins, while he launched himself on to the ground, grabbed a handful of fur and hung on to it for grim death. There was too much at stake. He would not fail this time. The selkies fought tooth and nail for their skins, but he was stronger than they were. With one last desperate wrench he stood up, victorious, a smooth, soft selkie skin in his hands. In front of him stood the black-haired selkie, her bottom half transformed into a seal, while at her feet, sobbing uncontrollably, lay the youngest of the five, the girl-woman. His triumph turned to bitter ashes in his mouth. He had only half succeeded and his half success was more disappointing even than an outright failure would have been. He had caught a selkie, for sure, but she was only a child, only a pup. Of them all, she was the only one he did not want, the only one he had no use for. Turning away from the pair of them, he clenched the soft fur tightly in his hands, steeling himself to throw the girl her skin and say farewell to his dreams for a second time. He would not try again. He would not come back to this lonely beach and torment himself yet again with the sight of what he could not have.

He had almost made up his mind to throw the fur on the rocks in front of him in utter defeat and walk away when the black-haired selkie spoke to him. “Give the child her skin.” Her voice was as smooth as the ocean on a windless day, and more seductive than anything he could have imagined. She sounded like an enchantress, a siren whose voice could call a sailor to his doom on the rocks. Her voice made up his mind for him. He could not let her go. Not without fighting for her in any way he could, with whatever weapon he had available. He turned around slowly. She had changed back to her human form and was holding her seal skin in front of her like a shield, hiding her human nakedness from his sight. Though her voice was controlled and calm, he saw fear and uncertainty in her face. She needed to protect the seal child from him and that need made her vulnerable. Vulnerable to his needs and his desires. The seal skin he had stolen was clutched tightly in his fingers. He had despaired too easily and too soon. There was still a chance he would get at least a little of what he had aimed for. “Why should I do that?” he asked, playing for time. “You can want nothing with her. She is just a baby, a mere child.” She gestured to the young girl lying on the beach, whimpering into the sand. “See, you have frightened her.” “A selkie is still a selkie, be she young or old.” He shrugged with studied casualness, not letting a flicker of excitement show at the prospect of striking a bargain with her. “She is a curiosity to me, nothing more.” He paused for a moment, letting the black-haired selkie visibly relax into relief before moving in for the kill. “But a curiosity that I have a fancy to keep.” “You cannot keep her,” she burst out, holding out her hands to him in entreaty. “You cannot.” Her heartfelt dismay struck daggers of guilt into his heart. The selkie clearly knew nothing of the ways of mankind, or of the art of bluffing. Every thought that went through her mind, every feeling she experienced, was written clearly on her face. Poor creature, her honesty only made her more vulnerable. “Why not?” Her face was white. “She is young. Too young. She will die if you keep her captive.” At her feet, the girl child’s heartbroken wailing intensified. He shrugged uneasily. Though he was only bluffing and would never knowingly hurt the girl child, the selkie’s disgust hurt him. “Then she will die and I will be robbed of my curiosity.” Her horror was written clearly over her face. “You would let a child die for so small a matter?” “She is no human child, but a creature of the sea,” he said, feeling abominably guilty for the trick he was playing on her emotions. “Why should I care overmuch whether she lives or dies?” She was silent for a moment, deep in thought. “What will you take in place of her seal skin?” she finally asked. He’d thought she would never get to that without his help. “What can you give me?” His momentary crisis of conscience now forgotten, he could barely contain his growing excitement. Now that the bargaining had started, he was sure he could

outmaneuver her every ploy. She was too innocent of the ways of men. “I can bring the fish to your nets so you never go hungry again,” she offered. “And keep the water calm for your boat so the waves never harm you.” He gave an offended snort. Could the selkie not tell from his dress or from his demeanor that he was no poverty-stricken fisherman? He could almost be offended by such an offer. “I have no need of fish or calm water,” he sneered. “I am the Earl of Stoneleigh and a gentleman of means.” “I know where ships full of Spanish gold lie sunken at the bottom of the sea. If you let her go,” she offered, a crafty look in her eye, “I will fetch you treasure from one of these ships. I will bring as much red gold as you please to ask me for. You will be a rich man.” What was more gold to him? He was no greedy miser to be swayed from his purpose with such a paltry offer. “I am a wealthy man already. I have no need of more treasure. A real living selkie woman is worth far more to me than all the sunken Spanish gold you could find for me.” She looked utterly dumbfounded at his refusal. “I thought full-blooded humans cared for little but gold. My mother taught me that no human could refuse such an offer.” How many things she had to learn. “Your mother was mistaken—there are many things I treasure far above gold.” And how he would enjoy teaching some of them to her. She gave her head a puzzled shake. “Then tell me one of them that I may offer it to you, if it is in my power to do so. What do you crave besides gold? What would entice you to give my sister back her skin?” “Give me yours. Give me your skin and the little one may go free.”

Chapter Two A shudder of horror racked her body and she clutched her skin tightly to her breast. “You want my seal skin?” He wanted her more than he wanted life itself. He could almost taste the wanting, deep and dark on his tongue. “Yes.” She shook her head, her eyes wild with fear, her knuckles white as she clenched her fingers into the soft fur. “I cannot give it to you. I cannot.” “No matter,” he said more easily than he felt, turning away as if to scramble back up the rocky cliffs to the grassy pasture above. He was calling his last bluff and hoping against hope that she would fall for it. “I have the young one’s skin. It matters not to me which skin I have so long as I have one of you.” “Is there nothing else I can give you in exchange?” she asked desperately, running after him and pulling on his coat sleeve. “I can give your ships good fortune on the sea. I can shower you in pearls from the oyster beds. Just name your price.” He was impervious to her pleading. “I have named my price already. I will have your skin or I will have nothing.” “My skin or nothing?”

His heart steeled against pity, he nodded. Big, translucent tears pearled at the corner of her eyes. As he watched her, one of them fell and ran unheeded down the whiteness of her face. With trembling hands, she held out the skin to him, letting it fall barely an inch away from her body, as if she could not bear to part with it a moment sooner than she had to. Her arms trembled and her voice shook. “Then I accept your price.” With one hand he held out the girl child’s seal skin, while with the other he took a firm grasp of the black-haired selkie’s skin. The selkie hesitated a moment, then glanced at the girl still lying curled on the beach, her tear-stained face turned up in mute entreaty. He gave a slight tug on the black fur and the deal was done. His prize was won. He held the skin to his chest with a feeling of utter exultation. The selkie whose skin he had captured watched him with eyes of hopeless longing, and the young girl on the beach let out a loud wail and covered her eyes with her hands as if she could not bear to see. The dark-haired selkie turned her back on him and hurried back to the young girl on the beach. “Hush, Caity, dry your tears. I have your skin for you.” The girl did not reach out for it as he had expected. “You gave him yours,” she sobbed. “You gave him yours for it.” “You are my sister and I love you. I could do nothing else.” “You will die on land.” “I am stronger than you may think. And stronger by far than you are.” She stroked the weeping girl’s hair. “Come, take your skin and get you gone.” The girl took her skin and got to her feet unsteadily. Her eyes wide with a mixture of fear and determination, she approached him warily as he stood on the rocks by the cliff. “Maya made an evil b-bargain with you,” she stuttered, her voice a pale shadow. “Take my skin and give Maya back her own.” He shook his head. All her bravery could avail her nothing. His fantasy was within his grasp and no plea, however piteous, could change his mind. “I will not swap it back again.” “She should never have traded her freedom for mine.” “The bargain is made and cannot be unmade. Besides, I do not want your skin. I never wanted it.” He raised his eyebrows in the direction of the black-haired selkie. “I only want hers.” She stood her ground, though he could see her trembling with fear. “You had no right to take it. Give Maya back her skin.” The black-haired selkie, Maya, came to stand by the frightened girl child. “You are wasting your breath,” she murmured so quietly he could barely hear her. “He is a human not a selkie, and deaf to any cry for pity. He will not relent. Now please go.” The girl turned towards her, her eyes full of anguish. “I cannot leave you.” Maya hugged the girl tightly to her before letting her go and pushing her away with a gentle hand. “Be off with you.” Still the child hesitated until Maya added softly. “Do not let my sacrifice have been in vain.” Her words finally convinced the girl child to step into her skin and slither into the

water. Tears falling down her face, Maya stood at the water’s edge and waved farewell as the seal pup dived into the crashing waves and, with one last flick of her tail, disappeared beneath the sea foam. Maya watched with relief as Caity swam through the green-blue waters of the sheltered bay and out to the open sea. Caity was safe now. No remorseless human could catch her now and rob her of her seal skin. She had not failed in her duty towards her young sister. She might not have failed to take care of her sister, but she had certainly failed to keep herself out of danger. The realization that she had done the unthinkable hit her anew, making her shudder uncontrollably. Her skin was in the hands of a human. She was in his power now. How often had she been warned that no human ever gave a selkie back her skin by choice. She was under his control until she wrested her skin off him by force or stole it from him by guile. She eyed him up warily as he stood in front of her on the rocks. Physically he was more than a match for her. There was little point trying to attack him and take the skin from him by force—he was too strong for her and would easily subdue her. Besides, another tussle over her skin might damage it, and then she would be maimed for life, unable to hunt for her own food and dependent on the good will and generosity of her fellow seals to survive. In times of plenty that would not matter so much, but in times of bad weather and few fish… She shuddered. A maimed seal could be a grievous burden to its folk. That risk was too great for her to take. No, it would be far better to take it from him again by stealth. He could not carry it with him always or watch over it without ceasing. Sooner or later he would slip and reveal its hiding place and then she would steal it from him and be free once more. One day, be it ten days or ten years from now, she would swim in the ocean again in the body of a seal. One day she would again surf the rolling swell far out in the middle of the ocean, and glide through the clear blue waters of a quiet bay. She would know once again the thrill of the hunt as she chased darting schools of fish and the warmth of the sun on her brown fur as she basked on the rocks on a hot summer’s day. She looked at her seal skin with longing and with determination. One day it would be hers again. There was no need for despair. Just as she was steeling herself to fight and to survive in the grim days ahead, the man spoke to her. “I will give it back to you.” His promise startled her back into the present. “What did you say?” she burst out, not believing the words she had just heard. Every selkie knew that a human never gave back a seal skin. Not willingly. “I will give you back your seal skin.” His words echoed her desires so closely it was as if he could read her thoughts. “You will?” She could not believe him. He was tricking her, trying to make her trust him so he could meanly take advantage of her trust. “I will.” His voice was rich and warm and he sounded so sincere, as if he really meant what he said. She must not forget that he was a human, however, and not to be trusted. Pure-blooded humans were tricky beasts at best, without the kindness or generosity of their selkie cousins.

Still she held out her hands to him, the desire to touch her skin strong in her. “Give it to me now, then.” He smiled at her, the skin firmly grasped in his arms. “Not now. I’ll give it to you later.” A little bit of her life departed at his words. She was still his captive. “When?” “When you have pleased me enough.” His words were so suspiciously simple they were bound to be full of guile. She could not trust his promise—she needed an oath. Humans, she had been told, took oath-breaking almost as seriously as did the finfolk. “Swear it to me. Swear to me that when I have pleased you enough you will give me back my skin.” He hesitated for a moment before speaking. “I swear it,” he said, his hand laid over his heart. “On my mother’s grave I swear that when you have pleased me enough I will give you back your skin and let you go free, so help me God.” All he wanted was for her to please him and then he would let her go free? The crushing burden of fear lifted from her shoulders. She would please him in a thousand ways and more if that would persuade him to let her go. “How do you want me to please you?” His smile grew wider. “You please me just by being the way you are. I like to look at you in your nakedness. You are very beautiful.” He beckoned her to come towards him. “You would please me even more if you would come closer and let me touch you.” She moved closer to the rocks where he was standing, but kept out of his reach. If only he would give her seal skin back, she would do whatever he wanted. “Closer.” “You will not hurt me?” Her seal intuition told her he did not want to hurt her, but she wanted to hear the words. He stayed still, making no sudden movements to startle her. “I would never hurt you. I just want to touch you.” It was strange that she had not noticed before what a handsome, well-made man he was. If she were to choose herself a human lover, she may well have chosen a man who looked just like him. She edged closer to him until he could reach out and touch her if he wanted. He did want. His hand was warm against her naked breast and she shuddered again, this time from pleasure, rather than fear. No man had ever touched her before, in her seal skin or out of it. Her seal skin was tantalizingly near to her now. She could reach out and touch it if she chose, if she could bear to feel it when she could not take it and slip back into her seal form whenever she wanted to. “Does that please you?” she asked, arching her back and thrusting her breasts forward into his hands. Anxious as she was to get her skin back, his touch certainly pleased her more than she had expected. She wanted to explore the novel sensation more fully. “It pleases me.” “Enough to give me back my fur?” she asked, cannily.

“No.” He shook his head slowly from side to side. “Not nearly enough.” “What would please you enough to give me back my fur?” “I want you to feel your hands on me.” She stumbled back a step. He was asking her to be the aggressor? Such behavior did not come naturally to her. “Where?” “Anywhere. Everywhere.” With one shy hand she reached out and stroked the side of his chin. The stubble was rough against her palm. “You feel strange. Not like a seal.” He smiled at the look of curiosity on her face. “Have you never touched a man’s face before?” “I have never touched any part of a man before.” Reaching out for her, he captured her wrist in his hand and drew her gently closer to him until she was standing between his thighs. “Then I will have much to teach you.” His voice was rich with satisfaction. “Now kiss me.” Her face tilted up to his and she touched her lips lightly to his rough cheek. “There.” “That was not what I would call a kiss.” She pouted. “What was wrong with it? It is the first kiss I have ever given to a man.” “No wonder it left me as cold as a fish then. Come, let me show you what a real kiss between a man and a woman is like.” His arms encircled her body and he drew her to him, pressing her against his hardness. “Take good note. This is what I would call a real kiss.” He covered her mouth with his own, teasing her with his tongue until she opened hers under his. His tongue invaded her mouth, exploring and tasting her. Curious, she moved her tongue against his, meeting his urgent thrusting with her own. It was like mating but different, the rhythm of their tongues matching the rhythm of what her body was longing to do. He deepened the kiss, thrusting against her with more purpose. His hand moved down to cup her bottom, pulling her hard against him. She shimmied her body against his, fitting herself into him. She was breathing hard when she finally broke off the kiss. “Did that please you?” It had pleased her more than she had expected. Her nipples felt as hard as flints and her pussy was throbbing. She wanted more. His face was flushed and his chest was heaving. “It did. You learn fast what pleases a man.” “Did it please you enough?” He shook his head. “Not yet. You have a long way to go before you please me enough to win back your skin.” “What else do you want? What else can I do to please you?” In reply, he nudged his hips against her, rubbing his pelvis into her stomach. His cock, hard and urgent, pushed against her through the fabric of his breeches. “I want you to touch me here. I want you to touch my cock.” The three sisters had talked about what a man liked them to do to him, and what

they liked their human lovers to do to them back again. Seals were hardly proficient lovers—the act was used solely for procreation, to create new life to carry on the selkie ways. Seals did not mate for the sheer joy of it, as humans did. The sisters had urged her often enough to take a human lover and find out for herself what true pleasure really meant. She sank to her knees in front of him and fumbled with the opening of his breeches, curious to explore his body. It seemed she was about to find out exactly what the sisters had appreciated so much about their human lovers. Her fingers were clumsy and she was unused to buttons, foolish, fiddly things they were. He didn’t seem to mind her clumsiness, but she was growing more impatient by the second. With a wrench that tore one of them loose from its moorings, finally she got them free. His cock sprang out and up, as thick as a baby conger eel and nearly as long. She touched it with curious hands, running the tips of her fingers along the smooth, pulsing shaft. A groan of pleasure burst from him and he bucked his hips to drive it deeper into her hands. “Kiss my cock.” His voice was strained. “Lick it all over. Take it into your mouth and suck on it.” His request matched her own desires perfectly. Now that she had touched him, she wanted to taste him as well. Excitement started to pool in the pit of her belly. With the tip of her tongue, she reached out and licked the very tip of his cock. It tasted salty, the taste of the sea that was her true home. No wonder the sisters had enjoyed suckling on a man’s cock to give him pleasure, she thought, as she moved in close between his legs and bent her head to the very same task. With his cock in her mouth, he was in her power. His cock was warm and hard to the touch and tasted like sunshine after a week of rain. She suckled on it with increased intensity, drinking in the sounds of the moans he made as she worked on him. Her heart swelled in triumph with each moan that he made. She would please him to her utmost and win her skin back again before night fell. Her own pussy started to grow wet again as she suckled on him. The desires that the sisters’ stories had first roused in her were now returning with a vengeance. She had felt desire in her seal skin but it was a pale shadow to the raging inferno she felt building in her human body. She wanted his cock inside her, she wanted to feel him stroke her from the inside. No, more than that. She positively needed to feel him inside her, to quench the fires that were burning her up inside. Writhing herself closer to him, she pressed her breasts, their nipples peaked and aching with sensitivity, against his thigh. The rasping touch of each hair on his thigh teased and tormented her. Still she sucked on him, squeezing his sac in one hand while she stroked his cock with the other, keeping time with her mouth, as she grew wetter and wetter. Deliberately she began rubbing her breasts against his thighs and her belly against his shins, craving his touch. Nothing could ease the burning inside her. It only grew hotter and more intense with every move she made. His sac drew up into his groin and his breathing grew harsh and labored. She started to withdraw from the pleasant task of sucking him, but he wound his free hand into her

hair and pushed her head back down again. “For Christ’s sake don’t stop now,” he ground out between clenched teeth, his voice sounding under severe strain. “Keep sucking on me.” He bucked his hips and gently pushed his straining cock back into her open mouth and she welcomed it gladly. A few more sucks on him and a groan burst out of the very depths of his being. Spasms racked his entire body over and over again, and a burst of salty sweetness burst out from the tip of his cock into her mouth. She swallowed the taste of the sea and went back for more, milking him with her hands and her mouth until she had wrung every drop from him. Only then did she let the suction of her lips break, and allow his now flaccid member to escape from her voracious mouth. Slowly she stood up, rubbing her body all along the length of his as she did so. Her breasts were pushed against his chest and one of his hard thighs was in between her legs, pressing into her pussy with tantalizing strength. “Did I please you?” she asked, anchoring herself with hands on his shoulders so she could rub her wet pussy gently up and down his thigh. “You pleased me,” he confessed, breathlessly. “Very much.” “Then give me back my skin,” she demanded, still rubbing herself against his thigh and chest and feeling strangely reluctant to leave him alone. “As you promised.” Once she had her skin back and was in control of the situation again, she would maybe even stay for a little longer. She could wait until he had recovered his fervor and wanted to make love to her again. Then she would let him take her, let him thrust his cock inside her, and pleasure her and spill his seed in her. She rubbed her pussy harder against him at the thought. Then, when she had had her fill of him, she would put on her seal skin and escape back to the sea. He stood there, his hands behind his back, as he breathing slowly returned to normal. Finally, when he had caught his breath again, he spoke. “No.” His voice was flat and final. The shock of his refusal made her forget her lust for a moment. “But I pleased you,” she exclaimed. “You swore you would give me back my skin when I had pleased you.” He raised a warning eyebrow. “That is not quite correct. I said I would give it back to you when you had pleased me enough.” She had sucked the man’s cock until he had come in her mouth. She had pleased him. She knew she had. The vibrations of his satisfaction had poured through every inch of her own body. “That was not enough?” she asked incredulously. Was there yet more to human pleasure? “Not by any means.” “But you had pleasure from me. I felt it, I tasted it,” she protested. “Yes, I had pleasure from you,” he said, as he tucked himself back into his breeches and did up what was left of the fastenings again. “But it was not enough. Not nearly enough.” “What more do you want? Tell me what you want me to do and I will do it. I will do whatever you want to please you.”

“Come, give me your hand and I will show you. Indeed, I will take great delight in showing you.” Maya followed him. Disappointed as she was at not getting her skin back, she felt a shiver of anticipation flutter up and down her spine at the thought of what he would show her. She hoped it would be soon. Her pussy was so hot for him that she had nearly reached her own peak just by rubbing herself against his leg. He clambered up the steep rock face, the selkie’s hand clasped tightly in his own. Now that he had tasted the sweetness she could bring him, he would not let her go in a hurry. The foolish creature had thought that just one orgasm, just one rush of mindless ecstasy, would be enough for him? Her simple mindedness would be her undoing. He would never have enough of her. The need for her was in his blood. He would possess her over and over, again and again, and he would never tire of the magic of her. Just at the mere thought of possessing her, his cock started to stir again in his breeches. He pulled at the waistband of his breeches, loosening them as much as he could to give his cock room to grow. By God, but she had milked him dry as a bone in the deserts of Araby just a few short minutes ago, and here he was already craving another taste of her. He’d been so needy that she had sucked him off in less time than it would’ve taken to suck off a randy schoolboy. Even though he had been dying to fuck her, to really fuck her, he had not been able to draw away from her warm, wet, suckling mouth even for a second, let alone for long enough to turn her over and thrust his aching cock into the tightness of her cunt. He had simply lost control and been unable to stop. Not that he needed to stop himself, or to feel guilty in any way for using the creature in such a manner. She’d enjoyed suckling on him, too, the randy little sea creature that she was. He reached down inside his coat with his free hand and smoothed down the nap of his woolen breeches, his fingers lingering in the wetness he found there. That particular patch could not be explained away by the rain. Oh no, the selkie was utterly responsible for that. Her dripping pussy had left a wet patch on his thigh where she had rubbed against him like a cat in heat. Her whole body had begged him to take her right there and there on the beach in the open air. He brought his dampened fingers to his mouth and licked them, savoring the taste of her arousal with his tongue. She tasted like an ordinary woman, a true human, but with a subtle difference. Her juice tasted somehow exotic, at once earthier and more ethereal than a true woman’s. It was tempting to stop right there in the rain, in the middle of the fields his tenant farmers so carefully cultivated, to taste her juices again. He wanted to lay her on her back and lap them right from her pussy. He strode on. His manor house boasted every comfort he might want—a soft bed, warm woolen blankets, hot water for washing and a thousand wax candles to light her body by. He was no peasant to have to fuck her in the rain in a muddy hedgerow. Once he returned to his manor house he would have plenty of time to make love to her in every way he could dream up.

Chapter Three

The sharp flints under her feet pained her soft soles. More than once she stumbled on the rough road and would have fallen if the man had not held her upright with the strength of his arm. She was a selkie and more used to the soft swish of water over her fins than the roughness of stone under her toes. Walking upright on her legs for such a long time felt unnatural and awkward. But more than the pain in her feet, the insistent ache in her loins bothered her almost beyond bearing. He had made her hot with wanting and then had left her needy and unfulfilled. She was burning up with heat and he would not let her slake her need. The cruelty of his torture was beyond imagining. She tried to rub her thighs together as she walked but the slight amount of friction she could manage on her swollen and throbbing parts was not nearly enough to satisfy her. It only increased her desire. “Please can we stop,” she begged, breathless, when the aching began to overpower her. She wanted to lie down in the grass, just where she was, and have him lie on top of her, his cock inside her, to satisfy the overpowering lust for him that was driving her mad. “You’re tired?” he asked, turning to look at her. At the sight of her limping, he gave an apologetic shrug. “Of course. I forget. You cannot be used to walking.” She pulled her hand out of his and sank down on to the grass, her legs splayed wide. “I’m not tired,” she confessed. “But I could not go another step.” She reached down with one hand. Ah, how good it felt to finally be able to touch herself, to turn the ache of unfulfilled desire into the pleasant burn of excited anticipation. She patted the wet ground beside her. “Come, join me here and we can please each other this time.” Instead of eagerly taking up her offer, he looked startled, and swung his head around quickly, evidently to check out their surroundings. His head stopped mid-swing and her frowned. Clearly, he didn’t like what he saw. “Get up,” he exclaimed with vehemence. She followed the direction of his gaze, but saw nothing to startle her in her turn. Her senses could not detect any predators lurking in the bushes waiting to strike out at them when they were engaged in lovemaking, and there was no other hazard in sight. Only a few other human figures, male she would guess by their breeches, quite some distance away. She peered at them to examine them more closely, but they seemed quite engaged in their own pursuits and unlikely to prove a danger. “What are you so worried about?” she asked, a smile starting to spread over her face as she stroked her wet pussy with growing delight. What a relief it was to finally be able to coax and tease the aching into a rush of fulfillment. “I said, get up.” His words were barked out with near fury. She shrugged and stayed where she was on the grass. There was clearly no reasoning with a human. If he could not or would not muster the enthusiasm to join her, he at least should not spoil her games. She dipped one finger, then two, into her eager cunt, arching her back, closing her eyes and shivering with the wondrous feeling of fullness it gave her inside. Pleasuring themselves was not something a seal could easily manage, but now that she was a human… As she touched herself, she let her eyes drift shut. He was not indispensable, this human who had stolen her skin. She did not need him to give her pleasure—she was

quite capable of giving it to herself. He did not leave her to enjoy herself for long. One rough hand reached out and yanked her brutally to her knees. “Get up, God damn you,” he said to her in a low whisper that was somehow more frightening than if he had shouted and raged at her. He pulled her up again, dragging her to her bruised feet, and setting off at a quick march along the rough ground. “This is not the time or place to be acting the whore.” She fought his grip, but he was too strong for her and she had to stay on her feet or be dragged along the ground. Robbed of her pleasure, she clawed and scratched at him, but he would not let go. So tight was his grasp that she could not get free of him, and he pulled her so quickly along over the slippery wet grass and the even more slippery wet rocks that she could barely keep up with him. She would have pleasured herself with her free hand if she could, as much to spite him as anything else, but she needed it to help her keep her balance. She did not want to fall and maim her pretty human body. Awkward as it was to get around in, she liked the smoothness of her skin and the oddity of long black hair falling over her shoulders. She even liked the strange shape of her human body, in particular the swell of her breasts and the generous curve of her hips, and the way she had two legs to balance on instead of a single torso and tail to propel her through the water. Her human body had never occupied many of her thoughts before. Indeed, she had not used it very often, preferring the smooth sleekness of her seal skin and the way her seal body could slice through the water faster than the fastest fish. Pulling herself up on to the beach and discarding her skin for a short time while she washed in the rain and then sunned herself on the rocks was the most she had ever used it for. Once or twice, maybe, a short walk on the sand beside the waves, but nothing more strenuous. She was not like the sisters, who seemed almost as comfortable on land as they were at sea. Being too far away from the sea made her nervous. Even the sensation of mud beneath her feet was new to her. She wiggled her toes experimentally. The feeling of it between her toes was unusual, but she had to admit she kind of liked it. Her captor stopped all of a sudden and she ploughed into him, the breasts she had recently been admiring squashing flat against his chest. He shook her off him impatiently. “You can’t walk up to the house like that,” he muttered at her. She looked critically down at her body. Although she was no expert on how human females ought to appear, she didn’t think there was anything offensive about the way she looked. Her body was not scarred or maimed or disfigured in any way. “Why not?” Ignoring her question, he shrugged off his coat. “Cover yourself with this,” he ordered, draping it over her body. It was cold and itchy, not like the soft fur of her own skin. She shrugged it off and let it fall in the mud at her feet. “I don’t like it.” “You don’t have to like it. You just have to wear it.” She held out one pleading hand to him. “Please, give me back my own coat. I will wear that gladly.” His eyes shot barbs at her. “Pick up my coat,” he ordered. Sulkily, she picked the dull, lifeless article from the mud between one finger and thumb and held it away from her body.

“Good. Now put it on.” Even more sulkily, she draped it gingerly over her shoulders as he had done before. “Not like that. Put it on properly.” He picked it off her back and held it open for her. “See, your arms go in here,” he said, as he manhandled her into the coat. “And the buttons do up like so.” The coat felt cold and clammy against her body, as if she were trying to climb into the body of a dead animal. He took her hand and pulled her after him again. “Come, let’s go.” She shivered with revulsion as she stumbled after him, holding her arms out from her body so that the dead thing touched her as little as possible. “I do not like it.” Tears were prickling the back of her eyelids and she blinked them away furiously. She did not want this human to see her weakness. The knowledge would give him another weapon to use against her. Slowing his pace, he turned his head to look at her. “You are not just being difficult,” he muttered to more to himself than to her. “You really do not like it, do you?” She shuddered as she concentrated on taking tiny, stiff-legged steps to avoid having the coat bump against her legs. “It feels alien. Dead. As if I were draping the skin of my dead brother around myself.” “You don’t have to wear it for long. Just until we get inside the house.” She plucked it away from her body with stiff fingers. “Why do I have to wear it at all?” He gestured to the figures in the distance. “There are people around.” “So?” “So you must cover yourself.” “Why?” She held the coat open so that her breasts swung free. Ah, the cold sea air on her skin felt good. “Do you not like looking at my naked body?” “Of course I like to look at it. Any man would.” He reached over and closed the coat over her chest, his fingers lingering over the swell of her breasts as he buttoned it up. “You are very beautiful in your human form. That is the problem.” “Why is it a problem if you find me pleasant to look on?” Really, she would never understand these humans. They made life so complicated. “Is that not better than if you were to find me somehow lacking, or even repulsive?” He shook his head. “Are all selkies are contrary as you are?” She shrugged helplessly, only wanting to understand him, not anger him. “Just wear the coat until you are inside. Then I will allow you to take it off.” She like the coat less the longer she wore it, but she supposed she could bear the thing on her back until they were inside this man’s house. “How far away are we from your house?” He gestured into the distance, where she could see a group of scattered buildings perched on the south side of a gentle, grassy slope. “No more than a mile.” A mile on her human legs? It would be nothing for her to swim, but to have to walk so far? She did not know even if she could walk so far. She gave him an assessing stare. “I can take it off as soon as I am inside?”

“You can.” Humans were tricky creatures, as she had found to her cost. That simple promise wasn’t enough for her. “And never put it on again?” “And never wear it again,” he confirmed. She looked at him suspiciously out of the corner of her eyes. “It will please you if I wear it until then?” “It will please me greatly.” His assertion finally satisfied her. She had to please him in every way possible to earn her skin back the faster. “I will wear it until then. But not a second longer.”

***** The manor house he lived in was grander by far than she had expected—a grandeur she had heard about only in old fairy stories that her mother and grandmother had told her. She had heard plenty of real tales about humans too, mostly from the sisters about the human lovers they had taken, but none of them had featured castles on cliffs with tapestries on the walls. Most of the sisters’ stories told about one-roomed peat huts with smoky fires in the middle of them. They had spoken of floors of packed mud and beds of straw that rustled noisily with every movement. The only food they had mentioned was coarse oatmeal cooked with water and flavored with a pinch of salt and the smoke from the fire. The skill of their lovers, however, they always claimed, had more than made up for any discomfort they had experienced as a human. She only hoped they had not been exaggerating. At any rate, their stories had not been prepared for the sight of this man’s house. The walls were thick and made of stone, and the floors were wide planks of wood, and covered in patterned rugs. She touched one with the tip of her bare foot, but moved hurriedly off it again. It too, felt cold and dead like the coat she was wearing. “You live here?” “I do. I am the master here.” He pushed open a door and ushered her into a room. “Stay here.” And he was gone. She heaved a sigh of relief. Now that she was inside, at last the hated coat could go. With feverish haste she pulled at the buttons, desperate to free them and rid herself of the cloying dead thing covering her body. The buttons came undone more easily this time—she was getting used to working with her human fingers. With a sigh of satisfaction she dropped the coat on the floor at her feet, stepped away from it, and stretched her arms above her head. Ah, it felt better to be in her own skin again, even if was just her human skin and not her seal skin. This borrowing the skins of others to wear on her back was an evil human habit. She rubbed her arms briskly to get rid of the feel of the coat, as she moved over to the huge glass windows that looked out over a pretty garden full of stiff-looking bushes and brightly colored flowers—so different to the waving seaweeds and bright anemones growing in the rock gardens of the ocean. It felt odd not to be able to reach out and touch the plants like the full-blooded men she could see out there tending to them. She was used to living in the open sea without walls or ceilings, where the seaweeds and anemones just grew where they pleased, with no one to tend to them. Being enclosed in

such a small space felt strange. Not necessarily bad, she decided after a moment’s thought—just different. Her discomfort with the coat was soon dealt with and a new discomfort started to build in her again. She moved her arms to rub her stomach, and then her breasts. She was no longer concerned about getting rid of the feel of the coat—she was simply enjoying her own touch. Her body had not forgotten the tantalizing glimpse into human pleasures that awaited her. And now that she was comfortable again, her body was demanding more. Far more. Her nipples started to peak under the touch of her hands, budding tight and hard again. She ran her palms over them, shivering with pleasure at the sensation. Humans were lucky to have hands—seals could not touch themselves like this or give themselves pleasure in this way. The humans tending to the garden were frankly staring at her by now but she paid them no heed. Seeing the master had already done the worse by taking her skin, these other men could do her no further harm. Besides, the glass of the window was between them. They could look all they wanted, but they could not touch her. The window ledge was low to the ground and just the right height for her foot. She bent her leg and placed it on the narrow ledge, opening her wet pussy to the air. She ran her hands over her breasts one more time and then slowly moved them down her body until they were at the juncture of her thighs. Her thighs were trembling at the thought of what was soon to come. She stopped there for a moment, savoring the delicious sensation of anticipation. With one hand she reached out and took hold of the curtains to steady herself, while with the other she stroked the soft hairs that covered her mound, teasing herself, not yet giving in to the desire that was building in her, stronger by the moment. The two human men tending to the garden had given up all pretence of working and were shuffling closer to the window, their eyes wide open and their mouths agape as if they had never seen a naked woman before, let alone a naked woman touching herself. She smiled at them as she raised her leg a little higher, opened her legs a little wider, and rubbed her clit with a long, lazy stroke that made her almost purr with pleasure. The men smiled back tentatively, both of them drawing up close to the window as they reached inside their breeches with eager hands. They were young men, dark-haired and dark-eyed and as alike as if they were twins. Handsome and strong, and quite a respectable size too, by the looks of the stiffening cocks they were drawing out of their breeches. The sisters, she was sure, would go wild for the touch of the men’s hands on their naked bodies and the thrust of their cocks into their wet and ready cunts. Though she was intrigued with the idea of an audience, she was quite content with her own exploring right now. She didn’t need the touch of a man just yet. She arched her back with delight, delighting in her chance to explore her human body so intimately. Ah, she decided after only a few minutes, pleasuring herself as a human was decidedly better than any sexual experience she had ever had as a seal. No wonder the sisters raved about it constantly. No wonder they were always taking the risk of discovery and the risk that a human would steal their skins in order to enjoy such a wonder. The gardeners were intent on enjoying themselves in a similar fashion. As she

stroked herself lazily in front of the windows, the two of them were playing with their own cocks, rubbing them up and down in a frenzy of enjoyment, as if they could not wait to reach their climax. She enjoyed watching their haste, and hearing the gasps and pants they made, loud enough even to reach her through the glass. She enjoyed seeing their cocks, swollen and purple, standing to attention at the sight of her nakedness. Her pussy dripped with her own excitement as she watched them stroking up and down. Seeing them get so enthusiastic at the sight of her touching herself made her even wetter and more excited than ever. They were almost close enough to touch. Indeed, if it weren’t for the glass of the window that barred her way, she could have reached out and touched them. She was ready to touch them now, and to have them touch her. She wanted to touch them, she wanted to feel the softness of their skin on her hands, she wanted to touch them and lick them and taste the salt of their cocks. She wanted them both all over her, touching and licking and kissing and fucking her both at the same time. She leaned over and touched her breasts tentatively against the glass. The coldness made her nipples peak, and she shivered. It would feel just as good to press her overheated pussy against the glass too, but she could not bear to stop stroking herself for long enough to try out the sensation. As she thrust her breasts harder against the glass, the two young men came to a peak at almost exactly the same time, splattering the glass of the window with their creamy white semen, and wringing out every last drop of come from their softening cocks with eager hands. She could hear their eager grunts of pleasure through the glass of the window, making her juices flow more copiously than ever. She stroked herself just a little faster, picking up the pace with tantalizing slowness, reveling in the knowledge that nothing could stop her now. The sight of them climaxing had brought her so close to the edge of pleasure. Arching her back, she let out a long, low moan of pure animal ecstasy. She was so close…

Chapter Four The skin. First of all he had to protect the skin. He shut the door behind the selkie and paused in the entryway, the fur held tightly in his hands. As long as that was safely hidden, Maya belonged to him. He would not feel satisfied until it was completely out of her reach—so well hidden that she would not be able to find it and escape his control. He had to get it off his property now. Right now. He strode out into the stable yard and called over his head groom. “Get the carriage ready. I want you to leave for Edinburgh posthaste.” The head groom doffed his cap. “Yes, my Lord. I will make the horses ready for you right away.” “I shall not be going to Edinburgh. You will be.” The groom looked surprised, but he knew better than to say anything other than another, “Yes, my Lord.”

“You are to take this with you.” He handed the groom the selkie skin. “Wrap it up well in an oilskin and carry it to Edinburgh. I want it safely stowed away in my townhouse as soon as you can get it there.” The groom took the skin gingerly and turned it over in his hands with a look of puzzlement on his face. His curiosity eventually overcame his caution and he asked, “What is it?” He glared at his servant. “Never you mind what it is. Just treat it with the utmost care and guard it with your life. I will have your head if it loses so much as a single hair through your mistreatment.” Though he was still clearly puzzled, the groom said only, “Yes, my Lord,” and hurried off to do his master’s bidding. He called the man back, anxious to impress on him the necessity of looking after his charge. “Wrap it well. I would not have it get wet.” “Yes, my Lord.” “Once you get to Edinburgh, place it carefully in my bedchamber. Put it there yourself and give the housekeeper strict orders that it is not to be touched. Not by her, not by anyone. Is that understood?” He did not want the curious to idly stare at it, or to run their fingers against its silky softness. “Yes, my Lord.” “And leave right away. I will expect to see you on the road as soon as you have harnessed the horses.” “Yes, my Lord.” With an anxious feeling gnawing at the pit of his stomach, he watched the groom go off into the stables carrying his precious bundle. He misliked the necessity of sending the skin away, but he knew he had no choice. Safeguarding the skin, both from Maya and from harm, was paramount. His part in it was taken care of—the rest was in God’s hands. He turned back to the house. Now that his first priority was taken care of and the skin was safe, he could see to Maya and deal with her, and with her unaccountable dislike of clothing. He smiled as he walked into the entryway. He much preferred a woman who liked taking her clothes off to one who insisted on keeping them all on. Once he got Maya upstairs and into his private chamber, she could indulge her liking for nudity to her heart’s content. He could see plenty of advantages in having her naked and waiting for him for as long as he chose to keep her. As long as she was properly instructed and taught to make herself decent whenever she left his bedchamber, they would get along fine. Her dislike of clothes would only encourage her to stay where he wanted her—in his bed. He opened the door to the sitting room, and stood transfixed for a moment with sheer fury as he took in the scene before him. Maya, the little slut of a selkie, was standing utterly naked in front of the full-length glass doors that led to the garden. She was balanced on one foot, while the other rested on the low window ledge, splaying herself wide open to the world as she rubbed her naked pussy with eager fingers, dipping her fingers in and out of her eager cunt and moaning aloud with pleasure.

She was putting on a show, and judging by the audience she had gathered and the mess they had made on his windows, it had been well worth watching. Furious, he stalked over to the window and pulled her roughly by the arm to face him. Her face was suffused with red and her chest was heaving with lust. He trembled with the desire to shake her until her teeth fell out. How dare she exhibit herself like that, and to a couple of common gardeners no less. “You slut,” he ground out between clenched teeth. She fought against his restraining hand. “I was just about to find pleasure,” she cried. “And you stopped me. Again.” “You were about to find pleasure by exhibiting yourself for those rogues?” He gestured at the pair of gardeners, who had stuffed their still-dripping cocks back into their breeches and were beating a hasty retreat through the hedge on the far side. She shrugged, not in the least bit embarrassed. “I was finding pleasure by myself until you came along. I did not mind that they liked to watch me. I liked it.” A selkie was as much animal as she was human, and not bound by human codes of behavior. He fought to remember that and to control his anger at the animal side of her. “But I care that you let them watch you,” he said as calmly as he could manage. “I care very much.” The sight of their semen on the window in front of him made him want to rage and smash things. He would have the pair of them flogged soundly for daring to watch his prize before he turned them off his estate to starve and die in the hedgerows for all he cared. “And if I care, you must care too.” “Send them away then, if it does not please you that they should watch me. For myself, I do not mind.” If he had been a brute, he would have beaten her until she minded, but he was a gentleman and a lord, so he restrained himself. “I have captured you and you belong to me and to me only. It must be your study to do only what pleases me and nothing that displeases me.” She sighed. “I will do what pleases you so that I may earn back my skin.” She gave a pout and ran her free hand over her peaking nipples, which contracted even more tightly under her touch. “But can I not please myself sometimes too?” He could not remain furious with a woman who tantalized him so. The sight of her hands on her breasts left him instantly wanting her again. He wanted to taste her, to bend his head down to her breasts and lick and suck on them. “It pleases you to touch yourself? Better than if a man touched you? Better than if I touched you?” Squirming in his grip, she plastered her body against him. “I have wanted you since the first moment I saw you on the beach,” she said, her voice showing her exasperation. “I gave you pleasure then, and was left wanting more. Can I not give myself pleasure now?” He would not stand for her pleasuring herself, not when he was more than ready and willing to do it for her. With his free hand he reached down and unbuttoned his breeches. She was hotter than the hottest wet dream he’d ever had as a young lad. By God, but he’d never dreamed he would ever have a naked selkie writhing all over him, rubbing her wet pussy on his thighs, and begging him to fuck her. “I will give you better than that,” he said, as he pushed his breeches over his hips. “Bend over.”

Her eyes widened at the sight of his hard cock and she bent over immediately, her legs splayed, her glorious ass raised high in the air. He reached down and touched her pussy. She was soaking wet and trembling with desire. He put the tip of one finger into her tight little cunt. She moaned with pleasure and pushed against him, urging him to go deeper. If she wanted him to fuck her, he was more than ready. He would show her that he was in control, that she belonged to him. He would take her and let her know that he was master here, and that his every order had to be obeyed. By the time he had finished with her, she would be begging to obey him. His cock needed no further preparation beyond the sight of her naked ass. He was as hard and ready as he had been on the beach. He withdrew his dripping finger and rubbed her juices on the head of his cock to moisten it, then parted her pussy lips with one hand and with the other he guided his cock home. Her cunt was slicker and tighter than he could have dreamed of. As tight as a young virgin’s untouched cunt. She cried out as he entered her, and thrust her ass back to meet him. He withdrew a little way and then drove in to her as far as he could go, until he was pushing toward her womb. Hard and fast he thrust into her, until she cried out with ecstasy and he felt her convulse around his shaft. Then he withdrew again, his cock still hard and throbbing, and dripping with her juices. That had been about her and her only. He would not take her here, bending over in the sitting room, for his own sake. He could afford to be generous once in a while. After all, because of the foolish bargain she had made with him, he had all the time in the world to fuck her whichever way he wanted to. And fuck her again he would very shortly, just as soon as he had her in the privacy of his own bedchamber and away from any spying eyes that might happen to chance on them. She was still bent over where he had left her, sobbing loudly, gulping air into her lungs with deep, noisy breaths. He felt irked at her distress. She had practically been on her knees begging him to fuck her, and now she was weeping over it? “You did not like that?” Her face turned to his, and he could see that her tears were tears of joy and wonder, not of pain or hurt. “Yes, I liked it.” Thank the Lord for small mercies. He never could bear a weeping woman. He did not like women who thought they could manipulate him with their tears—he was no green young fool to be so easily led by the nose. He pulled his breeches up again and buttoned them over his still-throbbing cock. He held out his hand to her, eager to have her to himself in private. “Come then, I will show you to the bedchamber you will share with me.” Maya straightened up again and wiped the tears from her face. So that was what the sisters had delighted in and talked about and obsessed over until she had almost been sick of hearing about their human lovers. Now she understood what all the fuss was about. Now she understood what drove them to discard their seal skins on a regular basis and cast themselves on the shore for a lusty young fisherman to find them and to fuck them.

She herself was ready to get down on her knees and kiss the man for making her feel so sensual and excited, for fulfilling her in ways that she had never dreamed of, but for the fact that she didn’t think that would please him overmuch. He certainly had not been happy to find her touching herself, even though she was glad that finding her with her fingers in her pussy had finally goaded him into fucking her. She would touch herself every day, if that was the effect it had on him. Never before had she felt such wondrous pleasure. If fucking her like that was what he liked, she would be only too glad to spend the next few hours, even the next few days, in studying how to please him. She would almost be sorry when she had pleased him enough to get back her seal skin. Already she knew that she would miss his touch. No other human, no eager young farmer boy or square-shouldered blacksmith, no lusty fisherman or lonely sailor, could ever make her feel as hungry and excited as this man could. The aftermath of pleasure was still shivering through her body. Indeed, she might even pay him another visit—next time leaving her seal skin safely with an aunt so that he could not capture her again. Then she would be free to stay or to go as she pleased. How deliciously the tables would be turned then. She would be in control and he would have to bend his mind towards pleasing her if he wanted her to stay. But for now there was no time to waste in such enticing fantasies. She had to please him in order to regain her precious freedom. She had best not forget her task. It was strange how long humans stayed on heat, Maya thought to herself as she followed the man up the staircase. Less than two moments ago she had experienced the most intense pleasure in her life, a pleasure that had utterly satisfied her and drained her, and left her feeling so satiated she thought that never again would she be able to feel desire. But her utter satisfaction had lasted only for the space of a dozen heartbeats. Even now her body was aching for more. Already she wanted him to fuck her again, as hard and as fast and as thoroughly as he had the first time. He threw open a door at the top of the staircase. “This will be your bedchamber. You will sleep here every night, unless I tell you otherwise. I will join you when it pleases me to do so.” She walked in over the threshold, her reawakening lust temporarily forgotten as she took in her surroundings with a curious eye. Seals by their very nature had no possessions to speak of. No seal could possess the fish in the sea that fed them, or the rocks on the beach where they slept in the warm sunshine. When you were hungry, you went hunting and ate whatever you caught— fish, or tasty squid or, if you were very lucky, delectable pink jellyfish with translucent tentacles, whose faint sting only added an extra fillip of fun to the meal. When you were tired, you rested on the rocks by the sea. What use was anything else to them? Humans, so it seemed, were very different. Not only did they build themselves houses of wood and stone, but they filled up their houses with all sorts of interesting and unusual items. She’d heard about them from stories, of course, but never before had she seen them with her own eyes. A platform covered in garments which served for sleeping on, stood in pride of place in the room. She sat on it gingerly, and tested out the springiness of it beneath her buttocks. It was much better than rocks for sitting on, she quickly decided. She would

like to lie on her back on it, with the man on top of her, fucking her face to face. It was at once firm and strong, but at the same time as soft and giving as the foam on the ocean waves. So was the chair covered in cushions that stood in the curve of the window. Indeed, the chair was better, as it afforded a view of the sea. The waves were more distant that she would have liked—she could not see the beach, only the water. She stopped still and listened intently, but all she could hear were the steps of the master, and the sound of his breathing. “Hush,” she whispered to him, holding her own breath on the word. He stood still and hushed just for a moment, but it was long enough. His silence told her that she could still hear the muted roar of the ocean, even from so far away, if she listened with all her might. The sound brought a smile to her heart. He could not cut her off completely from the ocean waves that were her lifeblood. She could still hear their call from behind her prison walls. With a start she realized the master had started to speak to her. Belatedly, she began to listen to him. “—inside the walls of this chamber, you are free to roam around as naked as you were born. As soon as you step outside, however,” and he fixed her with a steely glare, “you must cover your body. That is your first rule and you must obey it always.” His words hit at her heart and she recoiled from him in horror, her hands behind her back so he could not reach out for them. “Not the coat. You promised me I would never have to wear that evil garment ever again. You promised.” He made an exasperated noise with his tongue. “I said nothing about the coat.” She looked at him blankly. “What am I to wear then?” He opened a large wooden door in a corner of the room, exposing a large selection of garments hanging within. “These were my sister’s dresses. You may take your pick of them.” Maya put out one tentative hand to touch them, and was relieved to find that few of them felt like dead things. Most of them were far more pleasant to the touch, with the cool smoothness of sea anemones, or seaweed. She would not mind having such garments on her back if it would please the master. “Your sister will not mind?” The master gave a short laugh. “Have no fears on that score. My sister no longer wants or needs anything in this wardrobe. Take whatever you fancy.” A horrible suspicion flashed across her mind. “Your sister is dead?” Though the clothes in themselves were not offensive, she would never wear the clothes of a dead girl. No selkie would dare such an ill-omened act that showed no respect for the dead. The girl’s spirit would be outraged at such a violation and would come back to haunt her and bring her to her doom. “No, she is not dead. She is married to a young English pup.” He shook his head with a grimace of distaste. “Scottish clothes from Aberdeen are no longer good enough for her. She will touch nothing but the latest London fashions now.” She shrugged with relief, her selkie fears appeased. “And the ones I do not like? What of them?” “Throw them into the corner and I will have them burned.” She lost no time in doing exactly as he suggested. All the heavy garments that made

her shudder with revulsion when she touched them were soon discarded in a heap, leaving only the ones that felt good under her hands. There was a goodly pile of clothes on the floor when she had finished. The master looked at them with amusement that seemed to Maya mixed with something sour. “How like Fiona you are,” he muttered. “To throw away the good Scottish wool and keep the flimsy Indian cottons and Chinese silks.” Maya lifted her nose into the air, taking offence at his surly tone. “I care nothing for Fiona and her habits. I kept the clothes that did not feel dead.” He shrugged off her proud words, and took a garment from the wardrobe, a gown the deep blue color of the sea on a calm, sunny day. “Here, put this one on. It should fit you well enough.” It looked as if it should be easy enough to put on, but the appearance of simplicity was illusory. In a bare moment, she was entangled in its folds, not knowing which way to turn. The master took hold of her arms and guided them through the sleeves of the dress. A moment later, her head popped free. With a sigh of relief she wriggled her body a fraction, allowing the folds of the skirt to fall unimpeded down to her ankles. “Turn around.” She did as she was instructed, and the master tied her gown tightly from behind before stepping around to admire his handiwork. “You look very fine.” She moved her arms gingerly, encased as they were in the odd garment. “I do?” The gown felt infinitely better than the hideous coat, at any rate. If she could wear water, this is what it would feel like. Smooth as ice and cool to the touch, and fluid about her legs. He took her by the shoulder and guided her over to the open wardrobe door. “See for yourself.” A gasp of surprise escaped her at the reflection in the silvery mirror, and touched her hand to her hair self-consciously. A pool of water among the rocks had been her only mirror before now, her reflection blurred by the touch of sea-breeze on the surface. Now she could see herself as clearly as others saw her. She ran her fingers through her hair, tugging with some irritation at the knots and tangles. Her seal skin needed little attention to keep it sleek and fine, but human hair was quite the opposite. It tangled at the least provocation. How she wished she had a comb with her to work out the worst of the knots. The master laughed at her vanity “Here. Take this brush.” She stroked it tentatively over her hair, tugging gently at the snarls. It had not been so badly tangled since she was a pup. “Let me help you.” He took it out of her hand again and ran the bristled end over her head, stroking it from the crown of her head down to the ends of her long hair. As if by magic, the knots in her hair began to unravel. She leaned her head back, luxuriating in the feeling of her hair falling down her back as smoothly and cleanly as a waterfall. The master’s hands were warm on her neck and back as he combed through her hair. She was sorry when he put the brush down again and pronounced that her hair was

done. Lazily, she opened her eyes and looked in the mirror again. To her delight, her long human hair was now as sleek and smooth as her seal skin. Now that her hair looked better, she turned her attention to the rest of herself. The feeling of the dress on her body was delicious, and she loved the color, but it hid her from herself. She wanted to see herself as others saw her. She wanted to see herself naked and unadorned. She looked back over her shoulder at the master. “Unfasten my gown, if you please.”

Chapter Five A fleeting glance of disappointment passed over his face. “You do not like the gown?” “I do like it.” He shrugged, unconvinced. “I thought you looked particularly fine.” “The gown is pretty. It reminds me of the sea. But I have never seen myself so clearly. I want to see myself in the mirror. All of me,” she clarified, at the puzzlement on his face. “Without the gown on.” His puzzled look was replaced with the beginnings of a smile. “If you wish it.” He undid the buttons on the gown with deft fingers. She wriggled out of the arms, slipped them over her shoulders, and let the gown pool at her feet, staring at her new nakedness in the silvery mirror with unabashed curiosity. A human face stared back at her—the dark eyes and dark hair that she had seen before in the rock pools. Reaching up to her hair she stroked it lazily with the brush, watching herself as she did so. It was so new to her, this ability to see herself so clearly. She delighted in it. She could stand in front of this mirror all day just enjoying the novelty of looking at herself. The master was watching her too, as avidly as a hunting gannet circling above the sea. She met his eyes in the mirror and smiled a naughty invitation at him. Sure that she had caught his attention, she brought her hands down to her shoulders, and then to her breasts, cupping them with her hands, watching her own reflection as she did so. Watching herself touch her own body in the mirror more than doubled her pleasure. Watching herself, and seeing the master watch her, was infinitely more exciting and tantalizing than touching herself in front of the gardeners had been. In the mirror she saw his attention sharpen and head him suck in a quick hiss of breath. She moved her hands in small circles over her breasts, caressing them, feeling the soft roundness of her nipples turn hard, seeing them in the mirror as they grew small and hard and tight. “Look at me.” She breathed the words to herself, but of course they fell on other ears as well. “Look at my body, the smooth skin so white. And only a small tuft of fur here.” Her hands brushed at the soft hair that hid her center of pleasure “Look at how the curves flow, look at how this body moves.” Still facing the mirror she placed her feet slightly

apart and slowly bent her head to the floor. Her body retained the flexibility of her other form, and with her body folded completely in half, she gave him an upside-down grin. He looked at her, her head placed apparently comfortably between her calves. His eyes traveled up from her grin to her pink cunt, so plainly displayed in her contortionist ’s position. He marveled at the roundness of her ass, the play of the muscles as she unfolded back to a standing position. Enchanted with the movement of her body, she continued to explore herself, watching her reflection in the marvelous mirror. She turned side-on and lifted one leg from the floor. She felt the master’s eyes staring in lust at her nakedness as, in perfect balance, she lifted her leg straight into the air and held it there treating to a view of her cunt, which was now beginning to drip with her juices. She gazed at her balanced body in the mirror, and at the master’s reflection with his cock plainly straining for release in his trousers. With her free hand she touched her wetness, sliding two fingers into her pussy, then licking them as her eyes moved from his bulging trousers back to her own reflection. “Would you like a taste?” Without waiting for an answer she returned her extended leg to the floor and gracefully sat down on the rug. In one fluid movement she lay on her back, placed her hands in the small of her back, and lifted her whole body vertically into the air so her toes pointed to the ornate ceiling above, with only her upper shoulders and head on the floor. She looked in the mirror beside her as she bent her back to bring her feet to the ground, and held the position, head and shoulders on the floor, legs straight over her head. “Well?” To reinforce the invitation she bent her legs and brought her knees either side of her head, completely exposing her cunt and ass to him. With a quick fumble he unbuttoned his breeches, letting his cock spring out, hard and ready. It swayed tantalizingly above her eyes as he dropped to his knees to cover her with his body, his mouth lapping at her cunt, open in invitation. As he licked her, she gazed at his cock in admiration, already imaging the glorious feel of it deep in her pussy. He licked her cunt lips, teasing her around her clit, but not touching it. She gasped out aloud as he teased her there, squirming under his touch, tormenting her until there was nothing left in her mind but desire for him. Then he moved lower, stroking his tongue over that sensitive spot between her ass and cunt. The sight of his huge, hard cock swaying in front of her face transfixed her. She nuzzled at him gently, as he licked at her in his turn. Then her hands moved to his buttocks and pulled him towards her. She licked his sac, then took one of his balls into her mouth and gently sucked. He moved his attentions back to her cunt, dipping his tongue slightly into her wet hole, then swirling around the outside, occasionally teasing her hard clit. “You taste so good.” Maya moaned in delight as she reached up and stroked his hard cock while her tongue gently flicked at his sensitive, musky hole. “So do you. Ahh, so do you.” Iain removed his head from her soaking wet cunt and looked down at her, so open and inviting. He loved the taste of her, and the soft mewling sounds she made as he teased her with his tongue. Then he looked at their reflections in the mirror and he nearly came at the sight. If he didn’t fuck her soon, he would come all over her naked body before he even got to

thrust inside her. “I need you now.” He stood up and moved around to face her, his cock swaying and erect as he walked. Before him Maya was on the floor, ass in the air. He watched as the greedy little puss plunged two fingers into her cunt while the other rubbed her clit. She couldn’t keep her fingers out of her cunt, not willing even to wait until he could fuck her. He fell to his knees in front of her. “Take your fingers out of your pussy so I can fuck you.” She did as he ordered, with a soft pout of anticipation. He grabbed her buttocks and pulled them apart, making her cunt gape even more. With one hand he pushed down on his cock, then in one motion buried it to the hilt in her hot pussy. He was in heaven. Truly, his life could not get any better than this moment. Maya looked across at the mirror and watched as the master stood over her in a semi-crouch, his cock driving in and out in full strokes. The sight was too much to bear. She started to whimper and clench her pussy muscles as an orgasm unlike anything she had known before started to build up from deep inside her. He felt her approaching climax, felt her pussy tighten around his cock and knew he could not hold off any longer. His face contorted and his come jetted hotly from his cock deep into her pussy as he pushed as far into her as he could. In the mirror Maya saw his body strain as the orgasm overcame him. The sight of him thrusting into her and the feel of his come spurting inside her in a hot torrent of warmth made her own climax suddenly pinnacle in a cry of ecstasy, while outside the wind howled around the chimneys and the rain lashed against the windowpanes. Spent, Maya unfolded to rest on her side, as he collapsed on the rug beside her. He was breathing heavily, and Maya moved to half cover him. He held her close as his breathing slowed and they kissed languidly as the fires of their passion burned down to a slow simmer. She stretched out luxuriously on the rug in the aftermath of their lovemaking. She would not ask for her freedom now, and risk having him take her at her word and thrust her out into the dark to totter and stumble her way back to the sea over unfamiliar terrain and on unfamiliar legs. Just now, she would rather sleep than swim. Morning— and the return of her selkie skin—would come soon enough. A smile of intense satisfaction drifted over her face at the thought. Not just the thought of returning to her seal form either, but the remembrance of what she had done to earn it. The earning had satisfied the both of them. He had certainly satisfied her in more ways than she could count and more thoroughly than ever she had been before. Really, humans had better sex than seals did. There was no doubt in her mind about that at all. She could almost envy humans, gangly upright creatures that they were. The pleasure had not all been on her side, though. She had made sure of that. No human however greedy, could want more of her than she had freely given to her captor. She had pleased the man well enough to get her skin back, she would lay her life on it. The man leaned up on his elbow and looked curiously at her. “What strange thoughts are going through your head as you lay there, creature of the sea?” He put out his hand and stroked her hair, idly winding a strand of her hair around his forefinger.

“Tell me what is going through your mind.” She was more than half asleep already, and the rhythmic stroking of his hand on her hair calmed her further. “When morning comes,” she murmured through the haze of sleep that was clouding her mind, “you must give me back my skin.” She awoke reluctantly the following morning and stretched her arms out behind her, easing the ache in her muscles from the unusual sleeping position and wishing for the coolness of the ocean waves on her thick and heavy head. Sure, human sex was terrific, but even humans could not be making love all day and night. She had never been a human for half this long all at once before and she was beginning to tire of it. Being a human was quite different from what she had imagined. Everything about it was different. The way she walked, lumbering along the ground on her two feet instead of the effortless glide through the water of her seal form. The food she ate—long dead, all of it. The continual dryness of the world above the sea. Even when it rained heavily, as it had during the night, she was never more than half damp. What she wouldn’t give to be wet again. Properly wet all over, floating in the water as she loved to. It was only a pity and a shame that the coupling of seals was so unremarkable, given the delicious treats that she had sampled the previous evening. She rolled over on to her back, her side brushing against the warm flanks of the man who lay in the bed next to her. His naked skin felt smooth and slightly oily next to hers. He was not asleep, as she had thought, but as awake as she was. At the touch of her body against his, he leaned up on one elbow, caressing her stomach and breasts lightly with his free hand. “You are so very beautiful,” he murmured, speaking as much to himself as to her. “A man could lose his immortal soul for one as beautiful as you.” His eyes appeared as brown and melting as those of her seal brothers. A shiver of pleasure ran down her spine at the touch of his hands on her and the soft sound of his low-murmured words, and suddenly she was less than eager to be on her way. “Give me back my skin,” she demanded anyway. Once she had her skin safely in her possession again, she might even stay for a short while of her own free will, if he asked it of her. The softness in his eyes was gone in the blinking of an eye—so completely gone she wondered if she had imagined it being here in the first place. “No.” His voice, so soft and caressing before, was now harsh and forbidding. Had he not enjoyed his time in the bed with her? Had she been mistaken in thinking he had liked their sport as much as she had? “Surely I have pleased you enough now,” she asked, hesitant all of a sudden. “Or did you not care for me after all? Did you not find me to your taste?” The thought hurt her more than she expected. “You were well enough,” he barked, his voice as hoarse as that of her seal father in an angry temper. He did not sound pleased. Her head hung in disappointment. She, who had been so confident in her powers to please, was now utterly crestfallen. “I am new to human ways of acting,” she confessed, her voice small. “I wanted to please you—with all my heart I did. I am sorry I found so little favor in your eyes.” He waved his hand dismissively. “I said you were well enough.” “Not well enough for you to give me back my skin,” she said, her voice catching on

a sob. Though she had already decided she would stay longer with her human lover once her skin was safely in her possession and she was free to come or go as she liked, now she was suddenly desperate to escape. She did not like to feel trapped in a corner, at the mercy of a human. “But I am quick and eager to learn. If you will teach me to please you better, I will gladly learn.” Her words seemed to placate his angry spirit somewhat. “You will study to please me in all things.” It was a command rather than a request. She bit back a sob. “Will it take me long to learn to please you?” “I think not. You are a quick study.” A sennight then. A sennight was not too long, and it would surely suffice to win her freedom. She could survive for that long out of the water if she had to. “What would you have me do?” “You will be my lover, my mistress, even my slave, if I so desire it. You will fulfil my every wish and obey my every command. You will be mine in every way.” She nodded dumbly. What other choice did she have? This business of pleasing humans was harder than she had imagined it to be. She only hoped she would learn the knack of it soon. No task would be too menial for her to perform—she would be his servant, his slave, whatever he asked of her. Nothing else would convince him to let her go.

***** “Give me back my skin.” The words echoed unpleasantly in his ears, even hours after she had spoken them. He shook his head in irritation. A request, no a demand, for her skin were the last words she had spoken to him before sleeping, and the first words she spoke to him on waking. No sleepily murmured caresses for him, not even a bland “good morning”, but always that same demand. “Give me back my skin”. The selkie would not get her skin back. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever. He had captured her fair and square. She was the prize he had won and she belonged to him now, whether she liked it or not. Forever. “You cannot think to keep her here.” The housekeeper’s shocked sotto voce intruded into his pleasant daydream, in which Maya, naked and willing to please his every request, figured prominently. He glared at the old woman, to remind her that it was not her place to correct her master. “I do think to keep her here. And I will.” The housekeeper crossed herself hurriedly. “You cannot hide the truth from me. She is a selkie.” “Do not be foolish. She is a woman. Nothing but a woman.” “You are the foolish one to think you can hide what is so clear to all the household. You go walking by the sea and bring back with you a strange woman, as naked as the day she is born, who knows little of human customs.” She shook her head. “I have lived in Scotland all my life and I know more than you imagine. This new toy of yours is a seal woman who swims in the ocean and lies about on the rocks by the shore to sun herself. She is not a human girl, to be walking about on human feet and over dry land so

far from the sea. It’s unnatural.” The old woman’s words irritated him and he spoke sharply, in his anger letting slip more than he had intended. “She is a human now and a human she will stay for the rest of her days. She will never be a selkie again.” Though he had hardly dared to voice such thoughts, even to himself, the look of utter horror on Mrs. Abercrombie’s face still surprised him. “You cannot mean that.” “Why ever not?” The more he thought on it, the better the idea seemed to him to be. Maya would make a comfortable mistress, uninhibited and lusty in bed and eager to please him in every way. She would not demand expensive jewels or a house in London, and she could never leave him for as long as he wanted her to remain. Moreover if he ever tired of her, which he doubted he would for a very long time, she would leave without a fuss. His pet selkie would never create embarrassing scenes in public—she would simply vanish into the water again, as silently and swiftly as she had arrived. He had not thought that his old housekeeper would care so much for the welfare of his delightful new toy. Her misplaced concern irked him. “Selkies can’t bear to be kept from the sea for long,” Mrs. Abercrombie breathed, in a voice of doom. “She will sicken and die, for certain.” He glanced over at the selkie as she sat in the bay window silently gazing out to sea, completely oblivious to her surroundings, and was heartened to see that her hair was as glossy and her cheeks as pink and rosy as ever, despite the wistful look on her face as she gazed out to the water. “She looks as healthy as ever,” he said, more confidently than he felt. Her words had breathed into life the trace of guilt he had fought to suppress. The selkie was an animal, his captive, he reassured himself. It was right that he should keep her. He would look after her well. “Her seal folks will come to steal her away in the night, and her skin with it, and you will never see her again.” “I wish them luck,” he said calmly, thinking with some satisfaction of his foresight in having her skin taken all the way to his Edinburgh house to be safely stored there. “I have hidden her skin where they will not find it.” “They will tear down your house to look for it.” “Then I will build another.” “They will have their vengeance on you. They will call up the wind and the waves against you and you will be drowned or dashed to pieces against the rocks for daring to steal away one of their own kind.” “If I have to stay away from the ocean for the rest of my born days then so be it, but I will not give her up.” His eyes raked her silent form, a swell of possessiveness rising into his breast until he had no room for any other emotion. She was beautiful, and she was his. “You cannot dissuade me in this, old woman, whatever dire fate you predict for me. She is mine, and I will keep her.” “I see she has already bewitched you,” the housekeeper said, her voice shaking a little. “A selkie’s magic is powerful, when they choose to use it against us.” The suddenness of his anger surprised even him. “She has bewitched no one. No one! I forbid you ever to speak such words again. She is a woman now, and naught but a woman. I will teach her all she needs to know about human ways, and she will learn

them to please me. She will never be a selkie again unless I wish it.” “That is not wise, Master, if you will forgive an old woman for saying so. A selkie is a powerful—” He would not forgive her words, or her speaking out of turn. “I will not have that word spoken in this house again, do you hear me?” He put every ounce of anger and frustration he was feeling into his words. “Maya is a woman now. A woman. Nothing more and nothing less. You will forget that she was ever different, and you will never speak of it again. Never.” The housekeeper shook her head in mute protest. “You will live to regret it, young master,” she said, as she slowly turned away. “On my life, you will regret this.” She sighed, as if she would dearly love to remonstrate with him further, but dared not. He dismissed her with a wave of his hand. Her words meant nothing to him. They were the foolish ramblings of a superstitious old woman and he would pay them no heed. He would even be magnanimous enough to forgive her for uttering them in the first place, provided she never repeated her offence. The housekeeper hobbled to the door on her crooked feet, turning her head in the doorway to utter one last word of foreboding. “Never say I didn’t warn you.”

Chapter Six Dinnertime was always a trial for Maya. In the five days that she had been out of her seal skin she had learned many new human ways. Some came to her as naturally as breathing, but others were still a struggle. Eating in particular… She sighed as she looked down at her plate. She was hungry as can be, but humans made even the simple act of satisfying their appetite for food needlessly complicated. Carefully she took her knife in her right hand and her fork in her left and steeled herself to begin. She could feel the master’s eyes on her as she attacked her food, ready to correct her if she made a misstep. The sound of his voice startled her when he finally spoke. “You miss the water?” She nodded dumbly, chasing a piece of salmon around her plate with an inexpert fork and wishing she could take it into her hands and take a large bite, or simply put her mouth to her food where it lay. She was so hungry her stomach hurt and the rules humans made for themselves about how they had to eat their food had never seemed sillier. Still, her master had decreed that to please him she must learn the use of a knife and fork, so learn it she would. He took a sip of his wine and looked at her with a critical eye. “I cannot let you back into the sea. The danger is too great.” She had finally speared a hunk of fish on the tines of her fork and was munching it hungrily. “Danger?” she inquired around her mouthful of salmon. He grimaced at the sight and she fell silent. Humans did not talk while they were eating either, she remembered. She swallowed down the salmon in such haste that she almost choked and had to gulp a mouthful of water from her glass. “What danger?” Even in her human form she could swim well—better than most humans for sure. The

sea knew her as one of its own and would not deliberately hurt her. Besides, though she had reluctantly resigned herself to the bitter knowledge that she was no true weather selkie, she could read the sea and its moods better than most. She would not dare to trouble it when it was rumbling and disturbed in displeasure. It was not in her nature to court danger for the mere thrill of it. Her master did not deign to answer. “But I can give you water another way.” He waved a hand to one of the manservants—the one with the strong-looking legs and muscular torso who had put the salmon on her plate. She licked her lips as she looked at him and placed another forkful of baked salmon into her mouth. He looked almost as tasty as her dinner, with his firm, round buttocks and shapely calves. She wondered what he would look like with no clothes on. Would his body be white or tanned golden by the sun? Would his chest be well furred with springy black hair or as smooth as her own? Did his cock grow vigorously stiff and excitingly long and fat when he handled it or would it stay disappointingly thin and limp? The master caught the direction of her gaze and frowned again, his black brows nearly meeting in the middle of his face from the force of his irritation. She heaved a resentful sigh. Another rule she had broken without really meaning to. According to her master, she was not supposed to look at another other man with lustful eyes, or to touch another man at all. Most especially she was not to touch herself in front of any other man every again. The rule seemed needlessly harsh to her. What was the harm in looking at a handsome man, admiring the shape of his legs and wondering about the size of his cock? She was sure that all human women indulged in such a harmless fantasy. Why should the rules be any different for her? The thought of taking another human lover did not appeal to her—the master kept her so happily sated that there was no need for her to take another man as mate. She was simply curious. Were all human men as well endowed as the master was or was he something special? Could any man make her pussy as wet as the master did just by looking at her the way he looked at her, or was it just him? Did he have a special talent that other men lacked? Would being fucked by any other human man make her feel so good as it felt to be fucked by him? She could not believe so. During the five days she had spent in his company, he had mated with her in every way possible. She was confident now that she was learning to please him well, and he had satisfied her in his turn. Whatever the sisters said about their delight in variety, she could not believe that any man could be as good to mate with as the master. He had pleasured in so many, many ways, and she had done things with him that she had not even imagined doing before. At the thought of making love with the master, her nipples begin to tingle and her pussy to drip and she clamped her legs firmly together under the table to stop her untimely thoughts in their tracks. She was not supposed to initiate sex games with him, or even to think about having sex with him except when they were alone together in their bedroom. That rule, was far too easy to forget. With so many human rules to remember, it was hardly surprising she could not keep them all in her head at once. There were too many rules altogether. Far too many.

Her master was whispering to the manservant. She tamped down the rebellious thoughts in her head with some effort and went on with her dinner, savoring each bite as she brought it awkwardly to her lips. The salmon was definitely the most delicious of all, but the other dishes, though strange to her palate at first, were quite tasty in their own way. She could definitely grow used to human food. When she had finished eating and laid her knife and fork carefully down on her empty plate as she had been shown how, her master stood up and held out his hand to her. “Come. I have a treat for you.” Eagerly she rose from the table to follow him. “A treat?” Was he going to show her some new human sex game? Were there some delights she had yet to sample with him to explore? The thought made her breathing quicken in anticipation. “What is it?” He shook his head. “Be patient. You will see it soon.” She pulled her hand out of his in a sudden sulk. “Tell me what it is,” she said, stomping her feet on the wooden floor. She had had enough of all his rules and all his control. “I want to know now.” He stopped halfway down the hallway, so suddenly that she ran into his hard length in the dim light. “I said be patient.” He sounded like he was very nearly out of patience himself. She did not feel like being patient but as usual he gave her no choice. A few more days of obedience would hardly kill her. Mutely, she placed her hand back in his and allowed him to lead her upstairs and into the bedchamber they shared. Inside the bedchamber stood a large tub from which little tendrils of steam were escaping. “Here is your treat, impatient wench,” he said, gesturing to the tub. “I have had the servants draw you a bath.” She was gazing at it in awe and amazement, all thought of sex games gone instantly from her mind. “Water,” she breathed. It was the most marvelous sight she had ever seen. She reached out and stirred the surface with one fingertip. The calmness came alive into ripples under her touch. “Water.” “You can get into it,” he said as she hesitated, not knowing what to do next. “The tub is designed to lie in.” With a sigh of joy, she kicked off her slippers, lifted up her heavy skirts and climbed into the tub. The heat of it made her gasp. It was as if the sun had been shining on the ocean for a month of days together with no cooling nighttime to come between. It was water for sure, but not as she had ever known it before. She lay back gingerly into the hot water, until she was submerged up to the bottom of her chin. Her head fell back and her eyes closed of their own accord. Ah, what bliss it was to be properly wet again, completely wet from her shoulders down to her toes. She’ d forgotten how delicious it really was. A loud bark of laughter made her eyes snap open again. Her master was leaning against the wall with a look of utter amusement on his face. “It is customary to take your clothes off before you get into a bath.” She looked down at the silk of her dress, now quite sodden and see-through. She’d been in such a rush to get to the water, she had not given her clothing even a passing thought. “Is that another one of your rules?” she asked, her mood suddenly deflated.

“No, it’s not a rule. It is just that you might find your bath more comfortable without your clothes. Not to mention it will be a lot cheaper for me if you don’t go around ruining every dress I provide for you.” She gave a fleeting thought to her now ruined dress, and found she really couldn’t care. Once she had her skin back, she would never wear the pretty thing again anyway. For now, her master’s permission to take off her clothes was top of her mind. Standing up in the tub, she undid the buttons on her bodice with fumbling fingers. As soon as it was open enough, she pushed the sodden fabric off her shoulders and wriggled it over her hips. Her skirts, heavy with water, were the next to go. She felt infinitely lighter without them, as if she were casting off some of her humanness along with her clothes and becoming more like her seal self. Balancing first on one leg and then on the other, she rolled her stockings down her legs and added them to the pile of sodden clothing at the bottom of the tub. Finally she stepped out of her shift and sank back down into the warm water with a quiet moan of pleasure. Naked in the water, she felt almost like a selkie once more. Iain stood watching her as she removed her clothing and lay back down into the bath, a look of utter contentment on her face. She had not looked so happy since he had seen her on the beach with her wild sisters and taken her for his own. He was pleased with his own thoughtfulness in thinking to make her a bath. Since she clearly loved bathing so much, he would see to it that she had one drawn for her every evening if she wished. The servants would no doubt mutter among themselves about the extra work that heating the water in the kitchen cauldrons and then carrying it up two flights of stairs to the tub in their chamber entailed, but no matter. He was the master in the house and they would obey him if they valued their continued employment. He held out his hands to her. “Come, pass me your clothes.” She reached down into the water and drew out a mass of sodden silks which she handed to him without so much as a blush of shame for the expensive wreck she had made of them. Of course she was only a selkie, he reminded himself, and not given to the same emotions as human women. The wanton display she had given to the gardeners was proof enough she had no concept of shame. He wrung the water out of the clothes and flung them, still dripping, into a corner of the room. He did not like to think of the gardeners. The memory still had the power to infuriate him beyond belief. Her actions had not been intended to hurt him, he knew that, but they had hurt him all the same. He did not like the nagging feeling that he was not man enough for her, that she might turn to another if given free choice. Come to think of it, neither did he like the curious glances she had given the footman during dinner—she had clearly been admiring the man’s well-turned legs and, judging by the lascivious look in her eyes, calculating the size of his cock as well. His little selkie was proving to be rather less biddable and rather more trouble than he had expected. With measured hands, he began to pull off his cravat. He had never made love to any woman in a bathtub before. It was time to remedy the situation and to show his rebellious selkie that she had no need to look further afield if all she wanted was a good

fuck. He stood more than ready to accommodate her, and he did not like to share. In a brief moment, his clothes were stacked neatly on the end of their bed and he was standing over her as naked as she was. “Move over, selkie,” he instructed her. She opened her eyes, completely unsurprised to find him standing before her. “My name is Maya,” she said crossly, “not ‘Selkie’. Go away. There is not room for two in the tub.” “If you were to sit up, there would be.” “I do not wish to sit up,” she grumbled, but all the same she did as he had bid her, shifting her bottom to the end of the tub and drawing her knees up to her chin. The water rippled over the peaks of her breasts as he clambered in to the tub and sat facing her in the hot water. She relaxed her legs and sank back down into the tub, a leg on either side of him. “You are disturbing my bath.” Her voice no longer held a grumble though, and there was the merest hint of a naughty smile on her face. “I know. Does it bother you?” Her eyes were large and shining with happiness. “No, you are not bothering me,” she said cheekily. “You have my permission to share my bath.” She was rewarded with a genuine smile as he settled back in the tub. Maya looked at him as he lay before her, at his ease in the water with her. What games had this man taught her that she could use to finally tip the balance and please him enough to secure the return of her skin, and her freedom? She wished she could read his mind to see what he wanted but she was not gifted in that way. Few selkies were, and those lucky few kept their knowledge to themselves. They sat in the confines of the tub, warm water enveloping them as each looked at the other. She could see the lust in his eyes, and glancing down she saw the lust in his cock, clearly hard and erect beneath the water. Although he had been pleased with her each time they had mated, it had not been enough. She did not know why she had failed, all she knew was that something more, something different, was going to be required to get her skin back. She would need to put into practice all she had learned about her master’s preferences over the past days, and call on all her powers of invention to aid her as well. With those thoughts in mind, she reached for the soap. Her eyes fixed firmly on his to gauge his reaction to her movements, she moved the soap languidly over her breasts, her nipples crinkling to hardness with the attention. Almost immediately he reached out to touch them for himself. “No,” she commanded, pushing his hands away. She wanted him to wait until she was ready for him to touch her. He would learn what it was to be in the power of another, wishing and waiting and wanting. She would tease and torment him as he teased and tormented her, and not give in to him until he was crying out with need. A smile crept over her face at the thought. Let him see how he liked to be treated as he treated her. Iain sat back in the tub and watched Maya as she touched her breasts. He did not easily take orders from a woman, let alone a selkie, but this new slant on their love play

intrigued him. He would go along with her game and see where it led the pair of them. She got to her feet, slowly leaving the warm haven of the water, and stood in the tub, water and suds drifting down the sensuous curves of her body. He stared up at her as she slowly turned around, maneuvering her feet around his legs until she faced away from him. Lifting one leg out of the water, she placed her foot on the edge of the bath then bent slightly, displaying her cunt and ass to him. He reached out his hand to touch her pussy, to brush away the droplets of bath water that clung to her buttocks, just to touch her satiny skin. Once more she pushed him away with a firm tone. “No touching. Not yet.” He lay back in the bath, just watching. He had a clear view as Maya reached with her slippery fingers, stroking from her delicate pink asshole to her cunt, occasionally parting the folds of her labia and dipping inside. His cock ached with hardness as Maya continued to please herself. He could not look away even if he had tried. Now he understood why the gardeners had been unable to move away from such a sight, and had thrown away their jobs, risked their very lives, to watch it through to the end. He reached down into the bath water to secretly touch his own throbbing cock, just as they had done. The sight of a woman enjoying her own sex had been too much for them, as it might yet prove to be too much for him. Maya thought back to the young men in the garden who had watched as she rubbed her clit. The forbidden thought of them stroking their own cocks added to her increasing pleasure. With her back to the man who lay beneath her she couldn’t see him pumping his own cock but even with only one leg in the bath, she felt him in the water, her selkie nature sensitive to the smallest movement. She knew he wasn’t lying still, but nor was he vigorously pleasing himself as the gardeners had. He was moving quietly, as if he had never before touched himself in the presence of another woman. Down in the warm bath water he was indeed surreptitiously running his hand over his cock. Barely two feet away was the most erotic sight he had ever seen. He slowly stroked the lower part of his shaft lest friction on his sensitive glans cause him to come too quickly, before Maya had finished showing herself off to him. As one hand moved slightly up and down his cock the other massaged his balls, gently caressing, adding to the exquisite feeling. Never before had he done such a thing when with a woman—his women had always tended to the job of pleasing him, so he had not known the sheer pleasure of stroking himself while he watched a woman do the same to herself. He continued the slow pressure on his cock, while sliding his other hand from his sac to his nipples. He added to his own pleasure as he tweaked first one nipple then the other. Above him there was no hesitation in Maya’s movements, her fingers rubbing her clit with a fury. She felt her orgasm approaching and moved away from her clit to the opening of her cunt. She slid a finger in, then two. Then, with her fingers dripping with her own juices she reached from behind, bent over further and teased the entrance to her ass. Her breath caught as her fingers eased effortlessly past her tight hole. The sensation was exquisite, the fullness adding to her arousal while delaying her orgasm. She knew this change in focus from her cunt to her ass aroused the man beneath her as well, as the vibration in the water became more insistent. The cause of the increased disturbance in the water was the full strokes he was giving his cock. He had both hands on it now. With his right hand his thumb and

forefinger encircled the base of his painfully hard cock, making short but quick up and down movements. With his left hand he teased the large purplish head, tickling the glans and teasing the sensitive opening. He no longer cared that she knew he was playing with himself as he watched her above him. She still had one leg in the water, the other on the edge of the bath. She was bent over, her breasts resting on her leg as her arm reached behind her with two fingers deep in her own ass, slowly moving in and out as her breath came in short pants. From his supine position he could see her cunt slightly gaping, her juices forming droplets on her hairs and running down the inside of her thighs. As he watched she removed her fingers from her ass, lubricated a third with her cunt juice, and without hesitation slid all three fingers into her puckered hole. The sight caused his orgasm to approach with unexpected rapidity. He felt the come entering his cock, forcing him to stop his stroking and squeeze the base hard in an effort to halt the impending explosion. He lay absolutely still, one hand clutching his shaft while the orgasm backed off enough to prevent the stream of sticky white fluid from escaping. Maya knew he was close, and stopped her own stroking. Wordlessly she replaced her foot in the bath and knelt down. With her knees in the water she bent over the edge of the bath, reached behind her, and pulled apart the cheeks of her ass to reveal both her holes to him. “Fuck me now.” With a splash he reared out of the water and pushed his cock all the way into her cunt in one stroke. With his cock all the way inside her he could feel the head nearly at the entrance to her womb. He steadied himself with one hand, and with the other gently probed her asshole with two fingers. He felt little resistance as they slid into her tightest of holes. She remained still, his cock completely filling her cunt. Without moving her body she rhythmically squeezed her pussy muscles, milking his cock with tender strength. Behind, he desperately kept still, delaying his orgasm, but knowing it was hopeless to try as her cunt pulsed around his cock. Finally with a cry his body shuddered, and his semen finally erupted. As he came he pushed his cock harder into her, withdrew so only the head remained inside, then plunged in a second time as another wave of pleasure overcame him. With the fingers in her ass he could feel his cock moving inside her. Again he plunged, pushing her body against the end of the bath as water cascaded over the floor. Maya cried out in overwhelming pleasure as she came, the sensations causing her to lose all the strength in her limbs and collapse against the end of the bath. Slowly he removed his cock from her cunt and enjoyed the sight as he slowly pulled his fingers out of her ass, causing her to shudder again as a secondary orgasm enveloped her. Spent, he collapsed back into the water, sending another deluge onto the floor. Maya turned around to face him and lay down in the water, her legs either side of his body. The islands of her breasts floated above the water as she looked into his eyes at the other end of the tub. “Have I pleased you tonight?” Her face in the moonlight, in the aftermath of their pleasure, was so pale and tense that he wanted only to calm her fears. “Yes, you pleased me tonight. You pleased me well.” “How much?” Her face was a picture of hope. Really, it touched him to see how she

took her duty to please him to heart. She looked so earnest, as if she would burst out weeping if he claimed she had pleased him no more or less than any other woman could. He decided to treat her with the truth. “More than any other woman, human or selkie, has pleased me before.” At his words, her face bloomed into radiant happiness. “I have finally pleased you enough, then. I am glad.” An uncomfortable suspicion burst into his mind. “You have pleased me enough for what?” “Enough to get my skin back, of course,” she replied almost merrily. “You promised me on the beach when first you captured me that as soon as I had pleased you enough you would set me free. Now that I have pleased you more than any other woman ever has before, surely now you will set me free.” “You have not pleased me enough.” He knew his words were harsh, but she was acting like a child again, and her behavior vexed him. It was high time she ceased to badger him with her ridiculous demands and reconciled herself to her new position. She was his mistress, his lover. She would be whatever he wanted her to be. He would treasure her and care for her, and give her anything she wanted, save for the one thing she asked for now. “I doubt you will ever please me enough to let you go.” “Never?” The desolation on her face would have melted the heart of a weaker man. He was strong, and would not be swayed by female tears. “Never.” “Is there nothing I could do for you that would make you change your mind? Nothing that I could give to you?” He looked at her as she lay in the bath, his body sill shuddering from the intense pleasure she had given him. She was so beautiful, this sea creature he had captured. His selkie had spoiled him for other women. He would never look at another one with lust in his heart—not after he had known Maya. “I will never change my mind. You are mine, and you will stay mine for as long as I live.” God help him, but he might even marry her if she continued to please him this well. That would surely put a smile on to her face. He was, after all, Iain Argyle, Earl of Stoneleigh and without undue boasting he knew he was much sought after in the marriage marts both of Edinburgh and London. There was much to recommend him as a prospective husband. He had a fine house in London as well as his extensive estates in Scotland, which more than compensated for his lack of fashionable good looks and the burred accent of his homeland. None of the women he had met either in Scotland or England could hold a candle to Maya. He looked at her with a tender eye. She was truly the only woman he wanted. Maya looked little pleased at the prospect of staying with him. As he watched, she stood up in the bath, her sensuously curved legs and buttocks displayed to him, and clambered over the side. “Where are you going?” he demanded. He was not ready for her to leave him yet. She did not answer. “It would please me if you were to stay,” he said in a warning tone, as he watched her move over to the window on silent feet, dripping water as she went. “I do not care about pleasing you any longer,” she said, her voice curiously dead

and flat. She sat on the chair in the window, her chin on her elbow and gazed out to sea. Her hair lay in a wet tangle down her naked back. “Since you will not give me back my skin anyway.” “Maya, I want you to stay with me.” Toweling himself dry, he padded over to join her in the window. “I want you to live with me and be my lover and my companion. I want you to bear my children. I cannot let you go.” “It does not matter to you what I want?” she asked, in that same toneless voice. “You will be happy with me,” he pronounced with finality. “I will make you happy.” She did not deign to answer him, but continued to look out at the sea, a look of utter desolation on her face.

Chapter Seven “Where is my skin?” The housekeeper looked with a pitying eye at the naked waif that stood before her in the early morning light. For all the selkie’s nubile young body with its shapely buttocks and firm-tipped breasts, never before had she seen such a sad and sorry-looking figure. Her hair lay in an unkempt tangle over her drooping shoulders and her face was a picture of sorrow. Every inch of her, down to her very toes, spoke of desperation and of despair. “Where is my skin?” The waif’s piteous cry would melt the heart of a statue. “I’d tell you if I could, selkie,” she said, her heart bleeding for the poor sea creature kept on land against her will. “The master has done a wicked thing in stealing you from the sea and I want no part in his wickedness.” She heaved a great sigh and crossed herself as protection against the evil she could see taking place before her eyes but which she could not stop. “He was like this even when he was a little boy, always getting in some kind of mischief or another. He never would be told. Not by me. Not by his mother. Not by anyone.” “Where is my skin?” the selkie repeated, her voice low. “I do not know. Truly, I do not.” She laid a hand on the selkie’s shoulder in an attempt to comfort her. Truly, she pitied the creature. “Or I’d give it to you at once. I swear I would.” For the sake of her two sons who made their living as fishermen, she would never willingly anger such a powerful creature as a selkie. She would far rather have the selkie’s favor than her anger, and the anger of her people. The selkie winced away from her touch as if it were poison. “You cannot help me?” she whispered. “I will look for it for you,” she promised the woebegone creature. In truth, she had already searched high and low for the skin to give it back to the selkie and save her master from himself. “If I find it I will give it back to you.” The selkie considered her offer for a moment. “You have my thanks,” she whispered, as if she had no energy to speak louder. “For what they are worth.” The housekeeper shuddered, a shiver of foreboding running up and down her aged spine. “There’s no good that can come of this,” she muttered to herself, as the selkie

stumbled away on unsteady feet. “There’s no good can come of this.” The old woman had told her the truth. Maya had seen it in her eyes—the mixture of pity and fear of one who would help her, but could not. Despite the old woman’s eagerness to help her, she had little hope that she would find her skin for her. The master would have hidden it well. No, if she were to get her skin back she would have to rely on no one but herself. No one else in the house was awake but a sleepy scullery maid scrubbing dishes in the kitchen, who gawped open-mouthed as she passed but could not be brought to answer her query. She left the kitchen and wandered outside, the chill of early morning cold on her naked body. The dew was heavy on the grass and her feet welcomed the cool wetness. Sliding her toes over the wet grass, she made her way over to the stables where she could hear the noise of clattering. Maybe one of the grooms would know what the master had done with her skin. Her appearance at the stable door made the noise suddenly stop. The two young stable lads working with the horses stopped, their mouths open in shock as they saw her. “Where is my skin?” she asked the closest one. “Have you seen my skin?” He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again and swallowed convulsively, unable to utter a word. She dismissed him as a half-wit and looked across at the other boy. “Where is my skin?” The other stable boy, a young lad with a shock of red hair and freckles, managed to stammer out, “W-what are you l-looking for?” “I am looking for my skin. The master has taken it from me and I want it back again.” The red-haired youth paled. “You are the… ” His words tailed off and he took a step backwards. “I am the selkie,” she said, correctly divining what he was about to ask her. “Have you seen my skin? Do you know where my skin is hidden?” He shook his head, his face white. “It’s powerful bad luck to hide a selkie’s skin. I wouldn’t hide it for nothing.” “I will reward you well if you give it back to me,” she promised him. “I can show you were ships full of Spanish gold are wrecked in the ocean depths. I can show you beds of oysters full of pearls.” The two of them looked blankly at her at the mention of gold and pearls, and she racked her brains to imagine what might appeal to a young stable lad. “I can… I can chase the fish into your nets when you are at sea and protect you from the wind and the weather.” “Now that would be a powerful good spell,” the red-haired stable boy said. “My da would like for his nets to be full of fish every time he went out on his boat and to know that he was safe from the winds and the waves.” He looked at her cannily, his brow furrowed with concentration. “I don’t know where your skin is hidden but if I find it,

will you cast that spell for me?” She nodded. “I will. I swear on my skin that I will.” The other stable boy, the one she had dismissed as a half-wit, suddenly spoke up. “I know where it is.” The red-haired boy’s mouth dropped open and he gaped at him. Maya felt a spring of hope in her breast as she whirled around to face him. She took several steps forward into the musty gloom of the stables so she could see his face. “Where is it?” She held out pleading hands to him. “Tell me where it is.” His face was dark and his hair as black as that of the horse he had been grooming. He did not shrink from her as the red-haired boy had. “What will you give me if I tell you?” he asked boldly. “Gold? Pearls? Nets full of fishes?” she offered, her power of invention having left her in her excitement. He shook his head at each offer. “I don’t want none of those. If I had gold or pearls, I’ d be taken up as a thief and hanged, like as not. And nets full of fishes are no use to me, filthy slimy creatures that they are. I’d rather starve than be a fisherman. I’d sooner meet my Maker on dry land than in the depths of the sea.” “What do you want, then?” Renewed hope was making her eager. “I will give you anything I have in exchange for my skin.” A crafty look came into his face. “It would be a fine thing I’m sure, to be kissed by a selkie.” The red-haired boy drew his breath in with a hiss. “You shouldna have asked her for that, Willie.” “It’s little enough in exchange for telling her where her skin is hidden,” Willie replied, his voice defiant. Maya agreed. She would give him fifty kisses if he would tell her where her skin was. She drew near to him, so near that she was nearly touching him. “You swear you will tell me where my skin is if I kiss you?” The boy nodded, a sheen of perspiration covering his brow. “I swear.” He smelled of sweat and of horse, this boy from the stable. She wrinkled her nose as she drew close to him and touched her lips to his suntanned cheek. The boy jumped at her touch and leaped backwards with an exclamation of disgust. Once out of reach, he wiped at his dark cheek with the back of his hand with a grimace of distaste. “You didna like the kiss of a selkie, Willie?” the red-haired boy asked, with a flicker of amusement in his green eyes. “It was like being kissed by a wet fish,” the dark lad answered sulkily. “That means she disna fancy ye,” the red-haired boy said, cackling at his friend’s discomfiture. “Tis a spell the whole selkie folk weave for their protection.” Maya interrupted the burgeoning quarrel. “Where is my skin?” The dark stable boy glowered at her. “I should have asked for gold and taken my chances with being hanged,” he muttered. She shrugged. “Twas not my fault if you did not like the bargain you struck. It was made in good faith. Tell me, where is my skin.”

“You’d better tell her, Willie,” the other stable boy chimed in. “Heaven knows what other enchantments she might bring down on you if you don’t.” “It’s in Edinburgh,” Willie muttered. “Edinburgh?” she echoed, her heart giving way to despair once again. Edinburgh was many leagues away—a long way even for a selkie to swim, let alone for her to walk. “How do you know it’s in Edinburgh?” “I saw the master give a package to Tomms and tell him to ride to Edinburgh straight away.” His voice was truculent, as if he resented having to give so much away for so little return. “I was curious to see what was in it, so I crept over and peeped inside it when Tomms was saddling his horse.” “Looking for sommat to steal, more than likely,” the red-haired boy interjected. Willie made a rude gesture. “It was a fur all wrapped up, a dark brown fur and when I touched it, it felt different, like it was alive.” “My skin,” she breathed. It could be nothing else. “But where in Edinburgh would he have hidden it? Where has he taken it?” His bargain now completed, the dark-haired lad took up his shovel and started to clean the muck out of the horse’s stall. “That’s all I can tell you. I don’t know any more.” “The master’s got a house in Edinburgh,” the red-haired boy volunteered. “In Dunedin Place, where the toffs live. Tomms has gone there for sure.” She backed out of the stables, eager to be on her way and to start her impossible quest. “Thank you,” she whispered to the stable lads. To the red-haired one she added, “You will have that spell for your fish for the help you have given me.” The dark-haired boy threw her a black look and continued to shovel. The red-haired boy doffed his cap at her, his face split in a wide grin. “Thank you, for sure. My da will be right pleased. I wish you luck in finding your skin, selkie.” Maya scarcely heard him. She had already set her mind and her feet towards Edinburgh.

***** Iain woke to the sound of rain pattering against the windows. He reached out for Maya beside him, but the bed was cold and empty. Only then did he remember her stubborn refusal to come to sleep with him the previous night. She had insisted on sitting all night in her chair in the window, looking out at the blackness towards the sea. He could have insisted on carrying her to bed, but when he offered to pick her up, she turned on him with such a snarl that he thought it best to let her and her foul temper alone until she had cooled down. With any luck her temper had improved somewhat this morning. There was no joy in living with an ill-tempered harpy who bit and scratched at him if she did not get her own way. The wildness had to be tamed out of her one way or another. Maya was not in her room when he went looking for her. A small smile crossed his face. He had half expected her to still be sitting in the window looking out at the sea and holding on to her sulks as only a woman could. It was pleasing to find that she wasn’t the sort to hold a grudge overlong. She wasn’t at the breakfast table in the parlor and the maid, when questioned, had

not seen her all morning. Nor was she in the sitting room or the dining room, or any other room in the manor. By the time he had gone all over the manor looking for her and found nothing, he was beginning to worry. Where had his prize hidden herself? He was just throwing on his greatcoat in order to hasten down to the seashore where he had found her and search for her there among the rocks when Mrs. Abercrombie bustled up to him. “Are you looking for the selkie?” He thrust his arms into his sleeves. “Have you seen her?” Mrs. Abercrombie made a clucking noise with her tongue. “She was down at first light this morning, poor thing, as naked as the day she was born and looking for her skin.” He buttoned up the front of his greatcoat with fingers that had started to shake. Maya’s disappearance was making him more than a little uneasy. “And what did you say to her?” “I told her the truth,” Mrs. Abercrombie said belligerently. “I said that I didn’t know where it was but I’d be sure to look for it and give it back to her if I found it.” He glared at her. It was just as well for both of them he’d hidden the skin well out of the old woman’s reach. He would not forgive anyone, not even his old housekeeper, for interfering in this matter. “What did she say to that?” “The poor thing was sick at heart,” the old woman said in an accusing tone. “She cried for a bit as if she had no more joy left in her and then she wandered away—” This was no time for the foolishness of an old woman. “Where is she now?” he interrupted. “I have been busy about my own duties this morning,” she replied, her voice defensive. “I have not seen her since.” He was holding on to his temper with some effort. Extracting information from her was like wringing blood out of a stone. “Where did she go when she left you?” The old woman shrugged her shoulders, as if disavowing any knowledge. “She was looking for her skin. I did not question where she went.” He took one threatening step closer to her. “Come now, Mrs. Abercrombie, you must have seen the direction she took. I insist that you tell me where she went.” The housekeeper stuck out her bottom lip and glared at him. “She went outside.” Outside? In this foul weather? He had suspected as much, but he did not like to have his fears confirmed so baldly. “You did not think to stop her?” “Why should I stop her? Selkies should be free to go where they please. I would not be her jailer.” The old woman was foolish as well as impudent. “She will freeze in this weather with naught to cover her. Did you not think of that?” Mrs. Abercrombie looked mutinous. “She would not freeze if she had her skin to keep her warm.” Had she been a man, he would have struck her for her insolence. Since she was only a woman, and an old woman at that, he restrained his temper with no little effort. “If she comes to any harm,” he spat out. “I will hold you accountable. You will pay for any harm that befalls her, be it so much as a scratch.”

Mrs. Abercrombie was not a whit perturbed at his threat. “You’d be better off to lay the blame closer to home, young master Iain. Where it rightly belongs.” He was scarce out of the door when a stable boy came running towards him. “She’s gone to Edinburgh, master. The selkie’s gone to Edinburgh on her own two feet and with naught to cover her nakedness.” The boy’s words stopped him in his tracks. “Edinburgh?” he asked, his voice cold, fixing the lad with a steely glare. “Have you been blabbing out of turn?” The boy’s dark face turned white under its tan at the accusation. “‘Twas not my fault,” he whimpered. “She bewitched me into telling her all I knew about her skin. I didn’t tell her nothink. Just that Tomms had taken it off to Edinburgh. And then she went away and I came running here to find you. I thought you’d want to know,” he added self-righteously, subtly holding out his hand for the expected reward. “Which way did she go?” The lad pointed. “That way. Over the fields.” He reached in his pocket and flicked the lad a couple of farthings, little though the blabbermouth deserved them. “Saddle up Seafoam and hurry.” He strode around the back to the stables and pulled on his riding boots while the boys saddled up his fastest mare. At the last moment, he grabbed an extra horse blanket and tied it to the saddle. Maya would be half frozen by now. Then with a clatter of hooves and a jingle of spurs he leaped the fence and headed off into the fields after the selkie. Thankfully, she had not had the time to get far. After scarce ten minutes riding he spied her in the distance, her figure clear in the morning sun. He spurred the mare and rode up to her. “Maya,” he cried as he swung his leg over and landed on his feet beside her. “Maya, what are you doing?” Ignoring him, she continued walking, her feet stumbling on the slippery grass, wet with the morning dew. She was not, he noted, surprised to see him. He fell into step beside her, his booted feet next to her bare ones. “Where are you going?” “To Edinburgh,” she said as matter-of-factly as if it were not half the length of the country away. “To fetch my skin back.” He looked at her labored walking. Her feet were clearly sore and beginning to blister already and each step she took on them must be painful beyond belief, especially to a selkie more used to smooth water than rough ground. He had to admire her bravery even though he deplored her naiveté. Even were the weather less inclement, there were still thieves and brigands aplenty on the roads who would make fine sport of a naked woman. Even decent householders would turn their faces away from her in the state of undress she was in. At best, she would end up arrested and thrown into Bedlam. At worst—he shuddered to think what the worst that could befall her might be. One thing was for certain—she could expect no help from anyone on the road, and without help she could not possibly survive. “You cannot walk to Edinburgh. You’ll never make it that far.” She shrugged, not caring if she lived or died. “My skin is there. I want to be a seal

again.” Her skin was mottled blue with cold. “I believe you are foolish enough to try but I cannot let you go.” He untied the blanket he had brought with him and draped it over her shoulders. Her skin was icy as death. “You will die of cold.” She pushed it off her shoulders and let it fall on the grass. “I must go or I will die anyway.” Could she not see how absurd her behavior was? “You will freeze to death before you get half way.” She took a few more tottering steps forward. “I cannot live without my skin. I do not want to live without it.” He picked up the blanket from the ground and wrapped it around her shoulders. There was clearly no reasoning with her in this mood. “I am taking you home.”

Chapter Eight She fought him bravely, but his grip on her was too tight. He bundled her up on to the horse and then vaulted up behind her before she could slip off. One arm firmly anchoring her to him, he set Seafoam’s head for home. Her body was still trembling with cold when they reached the manor house. Tossing Seafoam’s reins to the stable boy, he carried her, still draped in the horse blanket, upstairs to her chamber. Pulling the counterpane back, he set her down on the crisp white linen sheets and drew a feather quilt over her to warm her. She curled up into the warmth, shivering uncontrollably as the heat seeped back into her bones. Sitting at the foot of the bed, he chafed her icy feet between his warm hands until they turned from blue back to pink again. He did not like to see her beautiful feet marred with blisters from her trek on the cold ground. “You must not run away again,” he commanded her, trying once again to drum some sense into her head. “You cannot survive in this weather with no food and no warm clothes.” She turned her head away from him and did not answer. He would not tolerate such a clear signaling of her intention to disobey him. “You must promise me you will not run away again.” He took her head between his hands and forced her to look him in the eyes. Her safety, even her life, depended on her good sense and her promise to him. “Swear to me you will not run. Swear to me on your skin, and I will trust you to keep your word.” Her dark eyes were cold with what looked like hatred. “I will make you no promises. I will swear you no oath. You have betrayed me. I will give you nothing.” Her accusation hit him with the force of a blow from a claymore. “I am a man of honor. I do not like what you are implying.” “You swore to me on the beach that you would let me go. Then last night you swore you would keep me forever, to be your slave.” She spat out the words. “I cared for you and tried my best to please you, and in return you will keep me here, whether I will or not. I will never be free. That is the worst betrayal of all.” “I never promised to let you go.” Even as he spoke, he realized how weak his defense really was, and he felt a gnawing of guilt in his gut. “Your freedom was

conditional only.” “You lied to me with your heart. You deceived me and you let me be deceived. I want only to be gone from here and never to see your deceitful face or to hear your twisted lies again.” He sat with her for an hour and more, pleading with her to see sense in the matter, but she lay still and unresponsive and would say nothing more. When he finally got up to leave for a moment to attend to nature’s call, her silent, accusing gaze followed him out the door. Down in the kitchens a few minutes later, Mrs. Abercrombie’s gaze was little warmer than the selkie as she bustled around, ordering around the terrified scullery maid in cross accents. “Make Maya a plate of food, if you would,” he instructed her. “A soft white bread roll with some fresh butter, and a salted herring or a good piece of salmon. She has not eaten all day. I will take it up to her myself as soon as it is ready.” “Are you planning on a picnic then?” Mrs. Abercrombie asked, her voice acid as a lemon. Her strange question startled him. “No. Why?” She snorted at his question. “You surely did not think you could keep the selkie here forever against her will? I saw her not two minutes ago heading out over the fields again.” Iain swore loudly and headed off at a run. He did not need his horse this time. She had barely made it into the fields when he caught up with her. At least this time she had had the good sense to dress herself, though the flimsy silk dress and soft slippers she was wearing were little protection from the chill wind and the misting drizzle that had started to fall. He swept her into his arms and carried her back to the house, ignoring her struggles. The housekeeper was watching them from the open kitchen door, her arms crossed over her chest. “Mrs. Abercrombie, bring the food up to Maya when it is ready,” he ordered as he passed. She gave a disapproving sniff, and her glare followed him all the way into the house. “I will not let you go,” he said to Maya, as he deposited her on the bed again, and stripped her of her wet clothes. “You cannot think to keep on running like this. It is no use.” She passively let him dry her hair and cover her again in the feather quilt but she made no move towards him. She simply sat still on the bed, conserving her energy, no doubt, for her next escape attempt. “I cannot stay here when my skin is not.” “I will find you wherever you run to.” “You do not understand.” She gave an exhausted sigh. “It does not signify how many times you come after me, or even whether you find me or not. I cannot stay here with you. I would rather die.” No, she was the one who did not understand. He would die rather than let her go. “I

cannot let you leave.” By the end of the afternoon, she had tried to run away twice more. The third time he caught her as she was running across the stable-yard. By the time he caught up with her for the fourth time as she was sneaking out of the front door, he’d had enough. “Send one of the grooms up to me,” he ordered the housekeeper as he carried Maya up the stairs for the fourth and last time that day. He would clearly have to bear with her until she had seen the folly of her ways, and was no longer so eager to escape. Until then, he would encourage her not to try to escape by whatever means he had at his disposal. “I need some thin strips of leather with buckles on them, about this long,” he instructed the groom who made his appearance in the bedchamber a short time later. He looked at Maya with a calculating eye, and indicated with his hands about how long they ought to be. “Fine leather, the softest you can find, with small silver buckles.” The groom doffed his cap. “Yes, master. How many exactly would you be wanting?” “Four will be enough but I must have them this afternoon. Along with a couple of lengths of rope.” The groom nodded. “Yes, master. I’ll see to it right away.” “Good. See that you do.” The sun was setting over the sea and the afternoon darkening into early evening when the groom finally returned. He stood at the door and held the leather straps out to Iain in his grubby hand. “Your straps, master.” Iain took them and examined them with a critical eye. The light tan leather was as soft as he could have hoped for, and the buckles were of finely worked Spanish silver. He tossed the man a silver sixpence. “You’ve done well.” Maya was lying on the bed, watching him. As he turned towards her, the straps dangling from one hand, she sat up with a start. “What are you going to use those for?” she asked. Her words held more energy and passion than he had seen her expend all day. He sat down next to her on the bed and took one of her hands in his. “I cannot have you running away tonight or any other night,” he explained, as he buckled one strap about her unwilling wrist. “Yet I cannot trust you to stay by my side. Nor can I stay up all night and day watching you. Sooner or later I will have to sleep.” “Let me go,” she screeched, doing her utmost to wrench herself free. Despite the best efforts of her teeth and claws, he buckled a second strap around her second wrist. “I have to put it out of your power to run from me—” “Let me go.” She was fighting him in earnest now, striking out at him in every way she could, more like an animal than a human. “—until I can persuade you to stay with me of your own free will.” He looped one of the lengths of rope through the buckles on her wrists and tied first one end of the rope and then the other to the bedposts. “I will never stay with you,” she spat at him. Her hair was in a wild tangle about her shoulders as she crouched at the head of the bed, her eyes blazing, facing him like a cornered cat. “Never. You are deceitful and untrustworthy. I would rather die.”

He stepped back for a moment to admire his handiwork. She was beautiful in her naked fury, her arms spread wide, unwillingly showing off her beautiful breasts to full advantage. He ached to lean over and place a kiss on each of those tempting nipples. “I intend to take very good care of you.” She hissed at him, her teeth bared. On second thoughts, he wouldn’t kiss her quite yet. She would no doubt bite him or knee him in the groin just as he was otherwise occupied. He’d finish his job first. He sat back down on the bed next to her, the other pair of his straps in his hand. “Give me your foot.” She glared at him and kicked out with one foot, swifter than a snake. His hand was faster even than her foot. He caught her ankle and tugged. Her tied arms gave her no help in balancing, and with an oomph she fell onto her bottom on the bed. Before she could recover her balance and wrench her foot back he had buckled a strap around it and knotted a coil of rope firmly into the buckle. Just as quickly, her anger dissolved into tearful pleading. “You cannot do this to me,” she cried, as he pulled her foot towards the bedpost at the end of the bed, inexorably spread-eagling her on the coverlet. Her eyes were filled with tears. “Not even a human could be so heartless. Please, I beg of you. Let me go to find my skin.” Her words made him pause for a moment, but only for a moment. She was only a woman, and only a half-woman at that. His only thought was to keep her safe from harm. He would soon prove to her that he wanted only what was best and right for her. He knew what would make her happy. She wanted him to be weak. She wanted to make him feel guilty with her begging and pleading, to manipulate him into giving her her freedom, but he was not so easily swayed as that. “Patience, Maya. I will not hurt you.” He took her other leg into his hands, caressing her ankle, over her heel and down to each dainty pink toe. Helpless now, she could only kick feebly at him with her free leg as he buckled the last strap around her ankle and tied that to the last bedpost. Even trussed up to the bed as she was, she continued to struggle feverishly against her bonds. “You cannot mean to keep me like this forever.” “Of course not. Just until you have seen the hopelessness of trying to run away from me.” “As soon as you let me go I will run away again,” she threatened. He smiled. He knew how he would be able to keep her by his side—he just needed time to persuade her. Thanks to her bonds he now had that time. “That is a foolish promise to make when you are tied up like this.” He ran one hand along the foot he had just tied to the bedpost, up past the ankle to the swell of her calf. Her ankle was small and delicate and her calf slender but solidly muscled. “Shouldn’t you be begging and pleading with me to let you go? Offering me everything in your power to make me happy in exchange for your freedom?” His hand moved over her ridged knee and along her smooth, creamy white thigh. Her flesh was hard and firm under his hand—she was solid muscle with only a thin

coating of fat on her. Her life as a seal must have been a hard one to give her such a trim body. “I tried that already,” she positively snarled at him. “You promised to set me free when I had pleased you enough, but you lied. You will never let me go free.” “In a few days, you will be begging me to keep you here,” he promised her, as he moved his hand to her belly. He was glad that he could offer her a different sort of life. No longer would she have to live the life of an animal, or rely on herself for catching her own food or for protecting herself from her enemies. She could depend on him now to see to her basic needs of food, shelter, warmth. And more besides… There were so many delights that he was anticipating introducing her to. Already she had shown a preference for the expensive silk gowns his little sister had favored. He knew only too well how costly fashionable dresses were but nothing was too good for his Maya. She could wear silk from her head to her toes, inside and out and he would not complain at the expense. It would positively delight him to dress her as a princess. All women loved showing off their jewelry to the world, and he would willingly drape Maya in diamonds if that would make her happy. He would even find the biggest and most creamy white pearls in all of Europe and have them strung on a necklace for her to remind her of her home in the sea. Although he greatly preferred his estate in the wilds of Scotland to the noise and bustle of the city, he would take her to London to show her the sights. Even though he hated squalling women with a passion, he would take a box at the opera for Maya to display her finery to best advantage. God help him, but he would even dance with her at assemblies if she requested it. He ran his hand over her flat stomach. How he would love to see that stomach growing and swelling with a babe. The sudden thought surprised him. He had never thought overmuch of having children before now. Filling a nursery had always seemed a distant duty that he would have to perform one day. With the naked Maya tied to his bed completely at his mercy, the thought suddenly became intensely attractive. How he would love to plant new life in her womb, have it take root and see her swell and grow with his seed. A child would bind Maya to him more strongly than anything else would. For a loving and caring woman like she was, even the giddy lure of a sparkling diamond necklace would pale in comparison to the unbreakable bonds of maternal love. He moved his hand to gently cup her breasts, almost intoxicated with the thought of his son or daughter suckling on her pink-tipped nipples, drawing sustenance from their mother. The day she gave him a son, he decided there and then, he would marry her. Though he was a lord of the realm and she was naught but a selkie with no dowry but the wind and the waves, he would take her as his wife. Such a promise would surely bind her to him for all time.

Chapter Nine Maya lay still in her bonds, watching under hooded lids as her captor lazily ran one

hand over her stomach and her breasts. Naked and bound as she was, he seemed hardly concentrating on her, lost in thoughts that she could not even begin to guess at. Only one thought was occupying her mind—escape from this man she had grown almost to care for. Escape back to the sea where the knowledge of his perfidy could not twist in her stomach like the blade of a knife. The most sensible course of action would be to pretend she had fallen for his tricks and to swear to stay with him of her own free will. Her heart rebelled against this plan, though. Even to save her life she refused to lie and cheat as he had. Such behavior would make her no better than he was. She would not be able to live with herself. No, she would rely on her wits and her cunning and escape the bonds that would be the death of her. She refused to dwell on what she would do once she had escaped the shackles that bound her, or how she would escape his clutches and find her skin. There would be time enough for that when she was once free. “What do you want from me, man?” He continued lazily caressing her breasts but she could tell by the more rapid movements of his hand and the faster pace of his breathing that he was no longer preoccupied with his own thoughts. She had his full attention now. “Your company.” “My company?” she parroted, with a disbelieving sniff. No man tied a naked woman to his bed just for the sake of her company. He would take her and mate with her whether or not she wanted him to but she was determined that she would not respond to him this time. Though he may be able to force her body he could not force her will. He could not make her welcome him into her body if she did not will it so. She wished only she did not want him with such hunger. It was doubtful whether she could stay indifferent and uninterested under his hands. They knew her body too well, and despite his lies and his deceitfulness she still wanted him too much. It hurt her to admit it but even now, tied up and at his mercy, she could feel her body responding to his nearness. He took his hands away from her body and let them fall by his side. “I want you to talk to me. I want you to tell me about your life under the sea. I want you to tell me about yourself, about your needs, about your wants and desires.” Now that he was no longer touching her, she missed the feel of his hands on her body. The knowledge that she was tied up at his pleasure and helpless to resist him only fuelled her fantasies. How perverse she was, that he could treat her worse than an animal but still she would lust after him. Her peaked breasts tingled with the remembrance of his touch, the roughness of his hand against her tight nipples, the strength of his palm cupping the fullness of her breasts. “Why?” She did not speak the questions that were trembling on her lips. Why do you not mate with me now? Why are you waiting to take your pleasure with me? Do you no longer desire me? His face was a closed mask. Had he sensed her resistance, or was he as oblivious to what she was thinking as she was to his thoughts? “I am curious.” She had so many wants and desires she would like to share, but she would not share them with this man. He had deprived her of her freedom and refused to give her back her skin. However wet she could feel herself getting at the thought of having his hard

cock inside her again, she would not admit to the man that she wanted him. She licked her dry lips with her wet tongue. She would not admit that even now, spread-eagled helplessly as she was on the bed, that she was thirsty for the taste of his cock in her mouth, thirsty for the salty taste of his seed spurting from his throbbing cock. She hated herself for still wanting him, still caring for him even now. “You have tied me to the bed so I cannot move. Why should I talk to you?” “To make the time pass more swiftly?” he suggested, the flicker of a smile on his face. If looks could kill, she would have skewered his heart on a pikestaff. “I care not how long you keep me here,” she lied, surreptitiously rubbing her thighs together to ease the desire itching inside her. How could she lust after a man whom she hated so? “Make up stories to amuse yourself, if it pleases you.” If only he had proved worthy of her love, how well she could have loved him. “I do not want to make up my own. I want to hear yours.” She remained stubbornly silent. “There were five of you on the beach, if I counted right. Three of them took to the water the moment I appeared.” The three sisters, she thought to herself. How right they had been about the dangerous pleasures that a selkie could find in a human body. She thought of the stories they had told and the fantasies they had shared with her on the rocky shore, and her breathing quickened. How they would laugh to hear that she had fallen under the spell of a human and lived out her wildest fantasies with him. She would have her own stories to tell them in her turn, if she ever managed to escape. The thought of escape sharpened her lust-drugged mind for a moment. She ought to be arousing his lust and using it to manipulate him in letting her go but somehow she could not deny the insistent demands of her own body. At this moment, she needed sex more than she needed her skin, even if the choice ended up killing her. She needed to lose herself in his body one last time. “Who was the other selkie on the beach? The young one who could not run as fast as the rest of you. The one whose skin I captured?” Still fighting her all-consuming lust, she feigned an all-consuming interest in the pattern of the plaster on the ceiling and did not look at him. “Why did you give up your skin in place of hers?” He moved to stroke her hair, tangled as it was by her earlier struggles. “She must be dear to your heart.” His fingers tugged at her hair, pulling at her scalp and she tossed them off impatiently. She did not want to like the feel on his hands on her body or the warmth of him stroking her hair. She wished he would take her roughly, make her cry out in pain as well as with pleasure as he satisfied his lust. She wanted him to fuck her with every ounce of strength in his body until she was limp and sated and she wanted to hate him back with every ounce of strength in her even as he satisfied her desires. “I would not have kept her skin, you know,” he remarked conversationally as if he had not completely shattered her world into pieces with his words. “She was only a child. I would not have harmed her.” All her blood rushed from her head, leaving her so dizzy and lightheaded she had to close her eyes to keep the darkness at bay. In that moment she truly did hate him. “You

would not have kept Caity’s skin?” she whispered into the blackness that threatened to engulf her. “Who is she, this Caity?” His voice was truly curious. She could not open her eyes and face her tormentor just yet. “She is my sister,” she whispered, feeling as if she had just suffered a terrible defeat. “My little sister who I will never see again.” “You must love your sister very dearly.” His voice sounded wistful as if he would like a share in such a love. Deceitful words flowed too easily from his lips. Words—nothing more than empty words. She did not want to believe him, or everything she had suffered and was still to suffer would have been in vain. “You really would not have harmed her?” “I wanted you from the beginning.” His voice held the suggestion of a wry smile. “You and only you. I would have given Caity back her skin. I would never have kept her.” He was a liar as all humans were. They were not honorable and truthful like selkies but as slippery as a blind eel in the dark. She should have learned better not to trust a word any of them said. “You lie,” she baldly. To keep a hold on her sanity and head to believe that he lied. “Look into my eyes, Maya, and read the truth in them.” She lifted her eyes to his, but she would not believe the honesty and pity she saw written there. “You would have kept her,” she maintained stubbornly. “And that would have killed her.” “Be honest with yourself, Maya. You know that is not so. That is your fear talking, not you.” A seed of doubt crept into her certainty and she could not remove it. “You were not above bargaining with the life of my baby sister to get what you wanted.” “I did not suggest the bargain,” he protested, sounding guilty nonetheless. “You offered yourself to me freely.” “If what you say is true, I had no need to give you my skin in exchange for hers. You were wrong to take advantage of my fear.” “I accepted what you offered, that is true,” he admitted. “I wanted you beyond words. Can you blame me for grasping at the glimpse of paradise you showed me?” Her belief was weakening. After all, he had not been deliberately cruel to her. Though he had refused to give her back her skin, he did not want to hurt her. He just did not understand that she could not live without her skin. Her greatest danger lay in his ignorance rather than his cruelty. “I did not trust you. Though you may not have meant her harm, I could not leave my sister to her doom.” He seemed satisfied with her grudging acceptance. “Tell me about Caity.” “What do you want to know about her?” He shrugged his shoulders. “Is she your only sister?” “No, but she is the youngest of us. My mother died not long after she was born and I took over caring for her. She has always held a special place in my heart.” He ran an idle hand over her breastbone, in admiration rather than in desire. “Are there many others who share your heart? Do you have a favored mate among your seal

kin?” A selkie mate? She wanted to lie to him, but her honesty and the unexpected lack of confidence in his voice forbade her. “Not anymore,” she admitted. “You did once?” She closed her eyes in remembrance. “When I was very young there was a fine young seal bull I fancied, but he never looked at me.” It was strange to think of him now, but the knowledge of his indifference had caused her much heartache at the time. “Was he mated with another?” “I do not know. Perhaps. At any rate, I was too young for him to take my infatuation seriously. And then one day… ” “One day?” he prompted her. “One day he was caught in the net of a fisherman, dragged on to shore and clubbed to death.” The grisly pictures from her memory flooding into her mind made her shudder. “I had followed him without his knowledge and was watching him from the rocks of a nearby reef. I saw it all.” “How you must have hated them.” His voice was soft, almost caring. “I did. I tried my best to harness the water and the waves to do my bidding to capsize their boat and drown them but they would not obey my feeble commands. The worst I could do to them was to break a small wave over their bow and splash their faces.” She smiled somewhat bitterly at the memory. Time had mended her broken heart, but it would never quite heal that particular wound. He misunderstood the cause of her pain. “That must have been small recompense for the loss of your beloved.” “At that moment I knew that I would never be a true storm-selkie,” she explained. “I know it was selfish of me but that loss was greater by far than the death of the selkie I fancied. If the waves would not come to me to avenge the loss of the selkie I loved, they would never come at my command.” He raised one skeptical eyebrow. “Other selkies can command the water and it obeys them?” She nodded. “Stronger selkies than I shall ever be can stir up the waves and settle them again at their will. It is a great power to have at your command.” He eyed her with a new respect. “You would like to wield that power?” “Who would not?” She shrugged, as well as she could in her bonds. “But I cannot and never will. The best I can manage is to tell when a storm is coming and when the storm clouds will clear and the warm sunshine will return.” He looked at her as if seeing her in a new light. “That in itself is a powerful ability.” She dismissed his praise with a sniff. “Any common fisherman can do the same nearly as well as I. One just has to watch the winds and the tides and get to learn their moods and their patterns. There is some skill but little magic in it.” He looked at her silence for a few minutes, examining her dispassionately. “Are you satisfied with being a selkie?” It had never occurred to her to be dissatisfied. She was a selkie and that was all there was to it. “What do you mean?” “You are not… not fully human.” He sounded almost embarrassed to be stating a

simple fact so clearly, as if he were telling her that she had a harelip or some other disfigurement. “Why would I want to be? I take human form when it pleases me and return to my seal form when I am tired of being two-legged. I am equally at home on both land and sea. Few humans can say as much.” “Can selkies never become fully human?” “Some selkies have forsaken their kind and taken a human husband in the kirk. Once they are wed to a human they can never return to the ocean.” She shuddered at the thought of the sacrifice the poor selkies had made to be with the man they loved. It was a poor sort of love on the man’s part, she had always thought, that would require a woman to make such a sacrifice. The master clearly did not share her views. “If that is all it takes to make you fully human,” he asked with some incredulity, “why are you so anxious to get your skin back? Why do you not marry me in the kirk and become a true woman? I will wed you gladly if that will make you lose your craving for the sea and leave you content to live beside me on land.” He did not understand her. Maybe he deliberately would not understand her. She challenged too many of his deeply held beliefs for him ever to accept her as she was, rather than as he wanted her to be. “I have to much seal in me to become one of them. I will never lose my craving for the sea.” Truly he was to be pitied. “I am not the lesser for being a selkie, as you seem to think. I am the greater. I do not wish to become fully human forever just as I do not wish to become fully seal. Human and seal are equally mixed in my nature, and are equally a part of me. I cannot deny what is in my blood even if I wanted to.” “You like being a seal?” She laughed out loud at the foolishness of the question. “Of course I do.” “So much so that you would not wed me?” “I would not give up half my life to wed any man.” “You like the chill of the water? You like living with danger around every corner? You like living in fear of fishermen waiting to catch you and club you to death or of the fierce teeth of killer whales eager to make you their prey?” She closed her eyes, imagining she was free of the bonds that held her tight and back in the deep blue of the ocean where she belonged. “I like the slice of my body through the water. I like the ease with which I can move, gliding through the water as if I were flying through the air. I am not bound to the ground as I am in my human form, but weightless in the water, able to rise or fall with a single flick of my powerful tail. “I like the thrill of the hunt when I am hungry—the wheeling and darting of the silver-bellied fish, the sheer giddy fun of chasing them and scattering them in all directions. I like my speed and agility which makes a lone straggler easy prey and the snap of my jaws as I sink my teeth into its sweet flesh. I like the joy of discovering a field of pink-tipped jellyfish hovering in clear water, a feast laid on for the seal folk by Neptune himself. “I like the gentle waving of seaweed in the current and the tide. I like to see it waft back and forth and I like to lie in the current and feel my body move with the same forces.

“I like to swim idly along the bottom of the reef on a moonlit night, nosing the sleepy fish out of the caves and hollows they hide in when daylight has gone and tugging gently at the seahorses clinging with spiny tails to the tendrils of seaweed. “I like to find the shells of sea creatures, intricate whorls of bright blues and pinks hidden among the rocks and weeds. They are the true treasures of the deep, not the pallid, lifeless gold that lies abandoned in shipwrecks on the ocean floor. “I am a creature of the ocean waves and of the rocky shores, not a creature of the grass-covered hills and snowy mountains. The sea is my first home and I am heartsick for it.” Iain looked down at her, helpless on the bed and considered her words. They touched his heart as nothing had for many years. He too, had once loved the water with almost equal passion. As a child he had spent hours in his uncle’s small boat peering into the water, wishing he could see better what lay beneath the calm waters. He would peer endlessly through the distortion of the ripples on the surface, watching the seaweed gently swaying, the occasional dart of a small silvery fish and the beautiful shells just out of reach. What it would be to swim down there, he had always wondered, amongst the creatures of the deep. To play with an octopus, to feed a fish from his hand, to watch the crabs go about their mysterious business. As a boy he had longed to grow gills and to join them, even for a day. He smiled briefly at the memory. He had not thought of his boyhood fantasies for many years. No wonder that he had always been fascinated by the selkies. And it was no wonder that he had fallen in love with his prize. For he did love her, he realized in a sudden flash of certainty. It wasn’t just her beauty or her spirit that drew him inexorably to her. It was that she was part of the ocean, just as he had once wished he’d been. “You speak of things of true beauty.” Her honesty and her eloquence genuinely moved him. “Things that lie beneath the waves that are so ignored by my kind unless they have some value to humans. Then they are dragged from the sea, to turn to ugliness on the land. “I too have enjoyed the feel of the water on my skin, floated weightless while the swell lifted me gently in its arms. Until you spoke of these joys I had not thought of them far too long. What is it that you have awakened in me?” Maya looked at him with surprise. Of all things, she had not expected this. “We humans take from the sea,” Iain continued, “with nary a thought that the bounty might be not as limitless as we suppose. I am as guilty as the rest. More so, in fact. We sail our ships over the surface of the seven oceans, and rarely think what lies beneath. Creatures of fluid grace, such as seals. Delicate seahorses of such bizarre shape that they defy description. These things are part of our world, and yet not.” He looked down at her with disconcerting tenderness. “Just as you are part of this world, and yet not.” He bent down and kissed her with such tender intensity that Maya thought she was back in the embrace of the sea. “I am indeed a foolish man to think I can capture you with these physical bonds.” As he spoke, he released the straps that held her legs to the corner of the bed. As he released each leg he gently caressed up her calf, over the knee, up the smoothness of her

thigh. He brushed lightly at the short, soft curls that lay the top, causing Maya’s breath to catch in her throat. He moved to release her arms but Maya shook her head as she moistened her lips. She liked this new mood of his. “Leave the restraints. Take off your clothes and lie on me. I want to feel bound with your skin next to mine. I want to taste you. I want to look at you while I lie here strapped to your bed.” Iain stood beside the bed and Maya watched the play of light on his chest as pulled his shirt over his head. He shyly turned his back and removed his trousers, giving her a tantalizing view of his hard buttocks and haunches. Misguided as he was, and cruel as he could sometimes be, he was a fine specimen, this human lover of hers. When he turned around, she moved her knees apart and bent her legs making her cunt open in invitation. A thin line of liquid seeped out and disappeared between her ass cheeks. Iain stared in lust at her obvious excitement. “You want me to make love to you? Even though I have treated you like an animal, kept you captive and tied you to the bed?” Even with all that, she could not resist him. “I want you to make love to me.” She looked at the purple head so tantalizingly close to her mouth. “I want to taste all of you.” He moved his cock closer to her mouth, just letting the tip rest on her tongue. Every little lick caused his swollen cock to jump repeatedly, each time getting harder and harder. She strained her head off the bed to get as much of his cock as she could. He knelt on the bed close to her head and looked at her cunt, so invitingly open and wet. She was a prize, this selkie of his, but she was not his to own. Never had he realized that so strongly as now, when she was tied to his bed and waiting for him to fuck her. “I want to taste all of you,” she repeated. There would be plenty of time in the morning to castigate himself. It was time now to give himself over to her pleasure. He straddled her head, moving up the bed allowing the head of his cock to rest on her lips as he faced her feet. And if her pleasure involved sucking his cock, so much the better for both of them. She licked the underside, trying to take him in her mouth, trying to wrap her lips around his hard and throbbing cock. She greedily licked his balls, gently taking each in turn into her mouth. Then she moved her head and licked between his sac and his ass, causing him to gasp in pleasure. As her knowing tongue caressed from his asshole to his balls, he stroked his cock slowly, his eyes locked firmly on her cunt. He wanted badly to fuck her, to plunge into her body and claim it as his own. Unable to take much more, he lifted his ass out of her reach as he bent down and spread her cunt even wider with his firm fingers. He rested his tongue on her clit and smelled her musky woman smell. The sheet beneath her was wet. He had to touch her, to tease her and to make her gasp with desire for him until she came for him. With a finger either side of her protruding clit he rubbed vigorously. The pressure caused Maya to drop her head to the bed and arch her back in exquisite agony. Without mercy he roughly massaged her clit while she writhed and strained at her bonds.

Her breath in short gasps, Maya cried out as the inescapable climax took over her senses, shutting out the world to everything but her center of pleasure. Giving her no respite, Iain spun around on the bed to face her, lifted her head and roughly forced his cock past her lips and into her mouth. With slow deep strokes he moved his cock over her tongue, aching as her warm mouth enveloped him. She moved her head forward to get as much of him as she could but the bonds that held her arms over her head restricted her movement. How tantalizing it would be for her to want him so much, yet for him to remain out of reach. He felt her strain against the leather straps and pulled back, his cock just out of reach of her mouth. Moving his hips slightly, he teased her with the tip of his cock. She continued to strain to reach the heavily swollen head, glistening with her saliva, as he relented and lay a salty drop of his own excitement on her lips. Her head fell back on the bed as she savored the taste. Kneeling at her side, he brushed his cock over her closest nipple and with his hand tweaked the other. He looked down at her, her eyes closed as she enjoyed his ministrations on her breasts. “Do you want me?” Her eyes opened and looked at him, right at him. “I want you. You and I are as one. I am of the sea first and the land second. You are of the land first, then the sea. Together we are equally of both worlds, which are really just one. Like us.” He had never seen such intensity in her gaze or heard such intensity in her voice. Her master no more, Maya’s lover lifted her knees and sank his cock completely into her hot cunt, her legs over his shoulders from where his cock could reach fully inside, to claim her as his own. He pushed into her then withdrew, and pushed again. He looked steadily into her eyes as he drove his cock again and again deeply into her welcoming pussy. As their pleasure rose, Maya’s body seemed to take on a glow. Outside the wind started to moan, whistling around the house. Suddenly a heavy squall of rain lashed at the window. Maya and Iain continued their rhythmic embrace while the sudden storm increased in ferocity outside. His climax approaching, his face contorted with the rush as he increased the speed of his fucking until he could hold himself no more. As her pussy muscles started to clench around him in the beginnings of an orgasm his body froze and his cock spurted his seed into his selkie love. Outside the storm reached its own climax, with lightning immediately followed by thunder signaling the closeness of the sudden storm. Maya felt his come like fire, the heat bringing her to the edge and pushing her over. Together they cried out in mutual pleasure, their bodies collapsing together onto the bed. His cock slowly lost its hardness while buried in her tight cunt as they lay together, sated with pleasure. He gently kissed Maya on the forehead, then reached up and released the straps that secured her to the bed. Outside the wind dropped, the rain ceased and the night became still, with only the drip of the water falling from the eaves to show it had ever arrived. He wanted to keep this feeling of peace between them forever, but he had to speak before he lost his courage. “You are right, we are one. It is wrong for me to hold you

here. I would prefer that you stay, but the choice is yours.” She hardly seemed to have heard him. “The storm,” she breathed, in a voice of wonder. “I felt it. I made it happen.” He looked at her with puzzlement in his eyes. “I am a storm-selkie after all. A real storm-selkie, with power over the wind and the waves. I can raise the wind, I can cause the sea to whip into white horses. All I could ever manage before was a gentle breeze to ripple the water. You have awakened in me the power that I thought I could never wield. Our love must have wakened it.” He rose up and looked at Maya, and was surprised at the strength of the love he felt toward her. She was right, he did love her, like he had loved no other. Looking at her beautiful form he was suddenly struck with how fragile she looked now. She had been a sturdy creature when first he had captured her—her hair glossy and sleek and her body firm and hard. What a difference a few days had made to her, the changes creeping up on him unnoticed until now. Her hair had lost some of its sheen and drooped lifeless about her thin shoulders. Her eyes were ringed with distress, lacking the life they showed moments ago during their lovemaking. Even her body looked somehow diminished, as if the life force inside her was waning by the day. He could escape the truth no longer. She was so heartsick for the loss of her skin that she had made herself ill. He tucked her under the blankets, knowing what he had to do next. No one would ever be able to call him murderer. However much he desired her, however much he wished he could keep her by his side for the rest of her days, he would not have her death on his conscience. Feeling as though his own heart was being ripped out of his body, he strode out to the stables to find the head groom and give him the order that would save Maya’s heart, and break his own. He would say nothing of this to her until he could make good his promise. She did not trust him, and rightly so. His actions were the only things that could win back her trust, and he could only hope they would not come too late to save her.

***** She must have heard him come into the bedchamber but she did not move, not even to greet him. Sick at heart, he came over to her and stood by her side, looking down at her where she lay. “Come on out of the bath,” he said, extending his hand out to help her up. “The water has long grown cold.” She did not answer him. She lay in the bath, her eyes closed, nothing to tell that she still lived but the gentle rise and fall of her chest as she breathed softly in and out. She had been lying in the bath since the servants had first drawn it for her at dawn, and the evening shadows were already lengthening. Surely it could not be good for her. He reached down to pick her up and shuddered to feel that her skin was as cold as ice. She tried to shrug off his hands. “Leave me be,” she whispered. “I cannot let you lie in cold water all night.” He plucked her out of the water and

wrapped her in a towel to dry. “You will catch a chill and take sick.” “I am dying anyway,” she murmured. Despite her weak protests, he rubbed her dry and carried her over to the bed. He tucked her under the blankets, knowing that he could delay the moment no longer. Tomms had returned from Edinburgh and brought with him the ending of his foolish dream. “Maya.” Her eyes and she looked weakly up at him, before closing them once more. She no longer had the energy to speak or even to smile. “Maya, my love, look at me.” The urgency in his voice propelled her into keeping her eyes open this time. “I have a gift for you.” She shook her head almost imperceptibly, her gaze fixed on his face. Was he so blind as that? Could he not see that she was past gifts? Their lovemaking the night before had tired her out, even to death. Still she could not regret it. He had shown her a piece of his soul and she would treasure his gift of himself. “You will like this gift, I promise you.” She sank back against the pillows again, exhausted by her brief effort. She needed no other gift than what he had given her last night. “I suppose I can hardly call it a gift,” he continued, “seeing as I stole it from you at the start. I am merely returning to you what I should never have taken.” He stopped for a moment. “Maya, I am giving you back your skin.” “Do not tease me,” she whispered between cracked lips. “It is not kind of you.” “This is no jest.” His voice held all the sadness she felt in her heart. “Come, take hold of it. It is yours again.” She felt a familiar warmth envelop her arms as he thrust her living breathing skin into her lap. How she had missed it. Until this moment arrived, she had not realized just how much. She drew it to her face, taking in deep breaths of the familiar salty smell, the smell of her life. Her heart was so full of happiness it felt like she was about to burst with joy. She found herself crying, fat tears running down her face as she hugged the precious garment tightly to her chest. “You have given me my freedom,” she sobbed, over and over again.

Chapter Ten “You have given me my freedom.” “I have.” His voice was somber but she could not care. Not now, when she had her skin back again. Her skin clasped to her chest, she tried to rise but her legs were too weak to hold her. He caught her as she collapsed back on to the bed. “You are too sick to move. Wait until you are better.”

“I will be better as soon as I see the ocean again. Please, will you take me there? My skin longs for the salt air and the feel of the ocean waves.” She was in his arms in an instant. With every step he took towards the beach where first he met her, the scent of the sea grew stronger, and the roar of the waves became louder. With every step he took, she felt her heart beat more strongly in her chest and her limbs strengthen. “Put me down. I can walk now,” she said, as he stopped briefly by the stile to catch his breath. He was breathing heavily with the effort of carrying her. “You are not strong enough,” he grunted in reply, as he started to move on. She wriggled out of his arms, surprising even herself with her newfound strength. “We will go faster now if I walk.” Her legs scarcely wobbled at all as she started off down the track. His face grim, he took her free arm and helped her along the rough track, steadying her when she stumbled. At the top of the cliff she stopped for a moment to look out over the ocean. It was just as she had remembered it, only more beautiful. A fresh breeze was blowing off the sea, rippling the surface of the water out as far as the horizon. Streaks of white broke along the water’s edge where the ripples foamed and broke in waves against the rocks. She sighed with pure joy as she looked out over the water. At last she was nearly home. “Watch your footing. The track is steep and slippery from the rain,” he warned her, as they started down the path to the beach. She hardly heard his warning, let alone paid it any heed. Anticipation was growing in her with the force of a tidal wave. She was so close to the ocean she could almost taste it. As soon as the path reached the beach, she broke free of his touch and ran down to the water’s edge. A wave slithered up over the sand toward her, the water cool and fresh on her toes. Her precious skin was in her arms, where it had been ever since he had returned it to her. With a sigh of utter relief, she clambered into it, feeling the familiar softness and warmth of her seal being steal over her. On her belly, she slid down into the welcoming water and swam off into the deep. He watched her transform herself back into a seal and slide off into the water without a backward glance. How eager she had been to leave him, he thought sadly as he watched her slip away from him. How quickly she had dismissed him from her mind, as if he had never made love to her a thousand ways and made her scream in pleasure each time, as if he had never existed for her at all. Her tracks in the sand were all that was left of her now. His eyes searched the ocean for as far as he could see, but there was no sign of her. She was gone back to her ocean home. Truly gone. He would not grieve for her. What was the use when she would not grieve for him? With one last backward look at the sea, he turned his feet towards his home, climbing the steep path up the cliff and plodding his way back over the fields with

leaden feet. In his arrogance, he had captured a selkie against her will, and for a brief and glorious time she had been his. His pride had been his punishment in the end. His selkie, his darling Maya, had turned the tables on him. She had captured his heart—forever. A cloud of gleaming mackerel engulfed her. Though she was not desperately hungry, she chased them just for the thrill of it, snapping at them as they darted hither and thither until she grabbed one silvery morsel and swallowed it whole. Ah, how good it felt to eat fresh fish again, fish that she had caught for herself. Human food was tasteless and dull in comparison. The fish in her belly made her feel more alive than ever. Now that she was free once more, she had already forgiven the human for capturing her and for making her fall in love with him. After all he had been good to her and he had loved her in his way. She felt her loins tingle at the thought of just how good he had been to her. She had enjoyed it too, until he had made it clear that he intended to keep her as a human for always. She had too much seal in her to be a human forever. Then she had wanted to not enjoy his touch any longer but she had not been able to turn off her feelings. He had made her feel so good, even against her will, that she had not been able to resist him. He had given her more pleasure than she had ever experienced in her life before. If for nothing else, she at least owed him her thanks for that. Her swimming slowed. In her eagerness to return to the water, she had not so much as thanked him for her freedom or even bid him farewell. Her conscience pricked her for her rude haste. With a flick of her tail she headed for the surface. A quick breath of air, and she headed for the beach. Maybe he would still be there, watching out for her. The beach was already deserted. He was not watching out for her or waiting for her. He had gone. She felt the prick of a tear in her eye and shook her head hastily, sending droplets of spray out in every direction. Why should she fret over his absence? In her selfish haste she had left him without looking back. Why would he do otherwise? Still, she could not shake the feeling of abandonment that came over her. For so many days he had watched over her, barely letting her out of his sight for a moment. And then, in a heartbeat, he had forgotten her.

***** He could not keep away from the shore. No matter how he sternly he forbade himself to feel such weakness, or how passionately he vowed to himself each night that he would conquer the absurd longing he still felt for the sea creature, his need for her was too great. Every morning, come warm sunshine or fierce biting wind and driving rain, he strode down to the shore and sat on the rocks, hoping against hope that Maya would come back to him.

She did not appear. The shore was deserted except for the mournful gulls, keeping watch with him in his vigil. Not even a full seal was to be seen, let alone a selkie. All seal folk had vanished from the beach. Day after day he spent by the water, neglecting his business, oblivious to all but the desire that still beat strongly in his heart. When the sun shone warmly enough, he threw off his clothes and swam naked in the bitingly cold ocean. The salt waves on his skin made him feel closer to Maya. The same waves that washed against his human body would also be washing against hers. The thought gave him comfort in his despair.

***** “The human took Maya captive and refused to let her go. He must be punished.” There were murmurs of agreement from every side, and several selkies in their seal form clapped their flippers together as a sign of approval. Maya looked desperately around the huge cave where the elders of her selkie colony had gathered, searching for a friendly face, a face of pity rather than revenge. There was no such face before her. The elders, seated apart from the others at one end of the cavern, were all dour and grim. “He did not hurt me,” she ventured into the expectant silence that fell as soon as she began to speak. “He fed me on the best human food and clothed me in silks and satins.” One of the elders brushed her testimony aside with a dismissive wave. “That is not the point. He kidnapped you and for that he must be punished.” “It is the point,” she protested. “He meant me no harm.” Another elder, his beard grizzled with gray, spoke up. “He kept your skin from you. What greater harm could he do to one of our kind?” “He wanted only to keep my by his side,” she protested. “He gave it back to me when I began to sicken. Would you punish a man for that?” She moved closer to them, to convince them with her proximity, if her words were not enough. “He is no fisherman who sought to spear me for my pelt or to prevent me from stealing his fish. Punish men like those as you please and I will speak not a word in their defense. For their crimes against our kind they do not deserve to live. All I ask is that you do not class Iain Argyle with men such as those. I have forgiven him for his sins against me and bear him no grudge—why can you not do likewise?” She stopped at last, her breast heaving with passion and with fear. The chief elder looked at her for some moments before speaking. “This man, this Iain Argyle, cannot be allowed to escape scot-free.” She instantly opened her mouth to protest his judgment, but he held up his hand to silence her. “Hush, Maya, do not argue with the law of your own kind. This human committed a grievous crime against the selkie folk, as well you know. That he later repented of his wickedness and let you go free does not cancel out his guilt. He will be punished as our law allows. That is my last word on the matter.” With a wave of his hand he dismissed the elders and those who had gathered to hear their judgment. Graceful despite his age, he clambered into his sealskin and slipped into the water at the cavern’s edge. Maya crouched by the rocks as one by one the selkies left, until only her sister Caity

was left to comfort her. She knew only too well the meaning of the sentence the elder had pronounced. Capturing a selkie was punishable by death. Her selkie folk would kill her lover. They would kill Iain, the man she loved and who had loved her back again. “Do not be sad,” Caity whispered, stroking the hair out of Maya’s eyes. “There has already been too much sadness when you did not come home with the sisters and me and we told the story of your capture. We thought you were lost to us forever.” “They will kill him, Caity,” Maya said, and the words made her break out into open sobbing. Now the elders had gone, she could not control herself for a moment longer. “They will send a wind to capsize his boat or a wave to wash him off the rocks when he is walking by the shore. There will be no saving him from their vengeance.” “If he were to go unpunished, other humans would take heart and grow ever bolder in their actions against us,” Caity argued. “If you save him from our wrath, more of us may die.” “I cannot let a guiltless man be punished for the crimes of a few fisherfolk who care naught for our anger,” she cried. “Whatever the law allows, that would not be just or right. I will not let that happen.” Caity looked at her, her eyes wide with a sudden understanding. “You have fallen in love with this man who captured you, haven’t you?” Maya hung her head. Her feelings for him shamed her in front of her selkie folk, yet she would not change them even if she could. “I have.” “And you would protect him even if he were guilty ten times over.” Maya’s voice was small and sad as she confessed to the truth. “I would.” “Then we have no choice but to swim for our lives. Or rather for his.” She slid off the rocks and into the swirl of the water at the mouth of the cavern. “Come, Maya, we still have time to rescue him, if we hurry.” Maya joined her in the cool water. “You must not come with me, Caity.” Caity’s face fell. “I only want for you to be happy,” she said passionately. “You gave your life for mine on the rocks, offering yourself to save me. I will never forget that. Never. You may need my help to rescue him.” Maya shook her head. “This is my fight, Caity, and mine alone. Go back to the sisters. They will watch out for you until I return.” Caity’s eyes were overlarge in her anxious face. “You will not turn your back on us and turn full-blood human?” Maya took her youngest sister in her arms. “I could never do that. You are my sister and I love you dearly. I would never abandon you.” Caity blinked back the tears that were swimming in her eyes. “You will return to me?” Maya kissed her on both cheeks as a pledge of her word. “I will return, I promise you.” Maya swam towards the mainland with the strength of desperation propelling her. Once the elders had pronounced sentence they did not dally in carrying it out. Even now, they would be weaving the charms that would put him in danger, and she would not be strong enough to break them. As soon as the charm was completed, both the wind and the waves would be his deadly enemies. She had to warn him before it was too late.

She surfaced close to the rocks where he had first found her, her tail slapping the water as she came up for a welcome breath of air. He was on the shore, sitting on the rocks, dabbling his bare feet in the rock pools. His eyes on the ground, he had not seen her break the surface of the waves. She knew a moment of panic. Last time she had put herself in the power of this man she had barely escaped with her life. Surely she was not so foolish as to put herself in his power again? It was not too late for her to change her mind. She could turn her back on him, leave him to the mercy of the charm the elders worked on him and swim away to safety. None of her selkie folk would think the less of her. On the contrary, they would applaud her decision to leave human affairs in the hands of the council of elders, where they belonged. Just then he looked up from the rock pools and his eyes met hers. Maya knew at that moment that she could not run. This man was her fate, whether she liked it or no. They were bound together by ties that counted for more than life itself. Trancelike, he stood and moved towards her, his eyes never leaving hers for a second. “Maya.” The whisper carried towards her over the rustle of the wind and the muted roar of the waves. The anguished hope in his voice touched her heart. And again it came, stronger and surer this time. “Maya.” Still she hesitated. Was she right to take this path? Or was her heart wrong? Was it leading her to destruction and to death? Then, from behind her, she heard the sound of the rising wind and the building water. It was as she had feared. The selkie’s vengeance was ready to be wreaked on her captor. She no longer cared for her own death—her only thought was to save her lover. With a desperate flick of her tail, she launched herself onto the pebbled beach and wrenched off her selkie skin. He came towards her, his eyes shining and his arms outstretched. “Maya.” She avoided his embrace with a quick sidestep, ruthlessly ignoring the look of hurt that came into his eyes. There was no time to dally or even to explain. Her skin in one hand, she grabbed his arm with her free hand and began to pull him towards the rocks. “Come, come quickly.” His feet were dragging over the stones. “Where are you taking me?” The noise of the water behind her was growing to a powerful roar. She risked a look behind her and blanched at the sight. The selkie’s rage had called forth a wave larger even than she had imagined. Using a strength she did not know she possessed, she pushed him in front of her on to path to the top of the cliff. “There is no time to talk,” she gasped. “Get to the top where you will be safe and I will explain.” He turned his head to look back at her, a question in his eyes. The question remained unspoken as he saw the wall of water rushing towards them and the reason for her sudden haste burst in on him with great clarity. He grabbed her arm and began to scramble up the path, pulling her with him now instead of the other way around. The cliff seemed endlessly high. Their feet scrabbled and slipped on the loose gravel

as they raced for their lives. Finally they reached the top where they stood for a bare moment, their breathing labored and their chests heaving with the effort. Below them, the small cove was awash with water. As they watched, another vast wave broke against the rock face, sending huge sprays of saltwater spurting up into the air. Maya shivered as the spray drenched her naked human body. She tugged at her lover’s arm as he stood silently watching the destruction below them. “Come away from the edge. The cliffs could crack and fall into the water.” He let her pull him backwards from the cliff until even the cautious Maya was satisfied there was no danger. “You knew that was going to happen.” The thought that she had sent those waves hurt him more deeply than even her leaving had. “I did.” He looked at her with sad eyes. “Were you so angry with me that you would drown me?” She shook her head, tears filling her eyes at his accusation. “The waves were not my doing. I could not stop them.” “Why did you come back to save me?” “Because I am bound to you.” He had no more power over her. “I gave you your freedom—the freedom which I should never have deprived you of in the first place. You owe me nothing.” “You gave me my life back again. I have given you yours.” “So we are even now? Is that what this was about? There is no further obligation that lies between us?” She shook her head. “None.” Slowly the water receded back into ocean, grumbling as if it knew it had missed its target. It left behind a wrecked and shattered beach strewn with seaweed and other detritus from the ocean depths. The huge rocks along the shore had been broken and tumbled about like a child’s playthings and lay scattered on what was left of the gravely sand. He would not have stood a chance if he had been down on the beach when the wave came in. The wave would have tossed him and broken him against the rocks, sucked him under the raging torrent or swept him back out to sea to drown. No human could possibly have survived such a wave. Not even a selkie could have swum its way to safety against such a force. But Maya, his own precious Maya, had risked her life to come and save him. He turned his head to look at her once more. She was more beautiful even than he had remembered and her beauty clutched at his heart. Though he knew in his heart that it was hopeless, that a selkie could not want the love of a human who had treated her so badly, he could not let her go without trying to win her heart one more time. He reached out for her, putting all his love and longing into that simple touch. “Tell me, Maya, was that the only reason you came back here? To save my life?” “Maybe I did not want you to die.” Her voice was a mere whisper. She was looking at her feet, not at him, as if she was risking much to admit even so little to him.

He tipped her chin back gently so that she had to face him, so he could read the truth in her eyes. “Was there a particular reason you did not want me to die? Did you miss me, Maya? Did you miss me as much as I missed you?” “I… ” she shrugged helplessly as her voice trailed off into nothing. She did not need to say any more, for he had read the truth in her face. “You care for me, don’t you Maya.” “I care for all creatures,” she said defensively. “But you care for me more than you care for any other man, human or selkie. You cannot deny it. I have read it in your eyes.” “I cannot stay with you and be a human for your sake.” He looked at the skin clutched tightly in her hand and gave a heavy sigh. Her knuckles were white with the tightness of her grip. “I will not take your skin again, Maya. I have learned my lesson well. It belongs to you.” “It were best you did not,” she agreed, though her grasp on the skin did not loosen. “I saved you from the anger of my people once. You might not be so lucky a second time.” “The wave?” he asked, astonished. Since Maya had not called it up from the depths, he had thought it merely to be a freak of nature that her seal nature had allowed her to sense while he was oblivious. “The selkies sent that wave?” The narrowness of his escape sent a sudden shiver down his spine. She nodded. “It was to be your punishment.” “Your people have that much power?” “We do, although we do not choose to use it often.” “And still you chose to save me from it?” “I would not have you die on my account.” He took her hands in his and kissed her on the mouth gently. “I did not deserve for you to risk your life for me, but I thank you anyway.” She pressed her body against his, writhing her nakedness against him until his cock was achingly hard. God, how he wanted her, this selkie who had stolen his heart away. “Make love to me,” she whispered into his ear. “I cannot stay with you, but we can be together one last time. Here in the open air where I belong.” The invitation was too close to what he desperately craved himself to be able to refuse. He shrugged off his sodden greatcoat and spread it over the grass. “Come, lie down with me.” She shook her head. “I do not like your coat. I have a better idea.” She lay her seal skin out on the grass, sat down cross-legged on it, and patted it invitingly. “Come, join me here.” Her every word, her every simple movement, was more erotic than his wildest fantasy come to life. Without taking his eyes off her, he kicked off his boots, shoved his breeches over his hips and pulled his shirt over his head. Her seal skin was soft and warm and rippled slightly under his weight as if it were still alive. He lay on his back on the warm fur and pulled her on top of him. Her skin caressed his naked back, while her warm body lay atop his own, sprawled over him as if she belonged there.

He put his arms around her and held her close. There was no question about it—she did belong there. No one else had ever made him feel so right or so whole. Or so hard. He shifted her a little on his stomach to give his already engorged cock room to grow even further. If he did not make love to her right now, he was going to explode. He just knew it. There was only so much desire a man could take before it mastered him, and he became a slave to the demands of his loins, instead of the other way around. He was fast approaching that point. Her nipples were peaked and hard. She gasped as he slid her up his body so he could reach them, and take them into his mouth. If his desires were not so urgent, he could have sucked on her breasts all day and night. “You taste better than cherries,” he groaned, as he finally let them free. She lay on top of him, her body plastered against his, feeling the power of the wind and the waves rise in her. She no longer wanted to make the elements rage and roar for her sake, for pity of her tied to a life that she could not lead. With a gentle touch of her mind, she raised a gentle breeze to chase away the lowering rain clouds and let the bright sun shine through in a clear blue sky. The sun was warm on her back as it dried off the last of the misting rain. Stretched out in the sunshine, languid and unhurried now that she was so close to fulfilling her desire for this man again, wanted these moments of perfect peace and even desire to last for hours, days even. There was no greater happiness than to have him in her arms and to have his mouth on her body, tasting her as if she were a delicious feast set out for him to enjoy. Her nipples were flinted pebbles with the suckling of his mouth and her pussy was wet with the joy of his touch. She brushed her nipples against his, and was rewarded with a low groan as his became as hard and tight as hers. It was good to know she had such power over him. His nipples were not the only part of him that was hard and tight. She shifted on him a little, reveling in the feeling of his hardness against her belly. He was as hard and unyielding as stone, and she was suddenly beset with an urgent desire to taste him, to taste the scent of the sea that was part of him. Slowly she slid her body down against his, licking and tasting him as she went, until she reached where she wanted to be. Crouched in between his thighs, she bent her head and took his cock into her mouth. She closed her eyes in bliss as her lips closed over his shaft. By all that she held dear, how she had wanted this. She sucked gently on him, reveling in the salty taste and the iron hardness of him. Her own pussy was dripping with the delight of having his throbbing cock in her mouth. Not breaking the suction of her mouth for a moment, she rubbed her thighs together, aiming for some measure of relief for the urgent desire that was building in her. He moved upward, holding his shoulders and torso just off the ground and took her body in his arms. “Come here to me,” he ordered her, pulling her mouth off his cock. She had not finished, not by any means. She ached for his salty come in her mouth

and the knowledge that she had pleasured him in such a way. “I want to taste more of you,” she complained, resisting his efforts to move her. “You can taste as much of me as you want.” His hands on her hips, he turned her body around so his mouth could reach her cunt. “But do not be a greedy-puss. I want to taste you too.” And then he took his mouth to her pussy and licked her clit in long, slow licks until she was trembling with need and any thought of complaining had gone right out of her head. He was her master and she was his slave, and she would do whatever he wanted her to do, if only he would lick her like this forever. She focused her attention on his cock again, her tongue seeking out every ridge to lick and suck. Balancing herself on one hand, she reached down with her other hand to massage his balls, grown small and tight with the urgency of his lust. His cock was pulsating wildly with every beat of his heart, and so engorged that she almost feared it would burst. He was so close to coming she could almost feel his orgasm stretch out to envelop her. She was reaching the edge. She was almost there. Holding out was getting more and more impossible. Then he sucked hard on her clit, just as he thrust two solid fingers into her, and she felt her orgasm sweep over her like a tidal wave. With the last of her consciousness, she sucked him just as hard back again, massaging his balls with eager strokes. Her instant reward was the salty taste of his come spurting into her mouth and the groan he gave as if the world had ended. And then she was lost in the depths of her own pleasure, intermingling with his until she could no longer tell where her body ended and his began.

Chapter Eleven He felt empty. Drained of all feeling and emotion. “This changes nothing, does it?” He wanted to weep, to rage out against the unfairness of the world, but he did not. He just looked at her, lying there naked on her skin, and loved her with a hopeless passion. “It changes nothing.” Her voice was curiously flat and empty. “You still will not marry me.” It was a statement rather than a question. He already knew what her answer would be. She would not turn human for his sake. “I will not marry you. I cannot.” “I understand.” And he did understand. He had asked too much of her. He would not give up his life as a human to live with her beneath the waves as a seal. The thought was so utterly alien it was inconceivable. Yet that was what he had expected her to do when he had stolen away her skin. It was no wonder she had nearly died of it. Maya slid off her skin and on to her feet. “I should leave you now. You will not be in danger from the selkie folk anymore. They have sent their vengeance out for you once, and you escaped it. If you do not sin against us again, they will not visit their wrath on you again.” Reluctantly he got to his feet in his turn. The feel of Maya’s seal skin was almost as warm and loving as the touch of her own soft, human skin. He wanted to roll himself up in it, wrap himself in her softness and stay there forever.

Vengeance or no, he would sit on the beach and watch for her. He resisted the urge to grab hold of her skin and claim it as his own again. The temptation was so strong to have her in his power again, even for a single day, but he fought his baser desires and won. He bent down, picked up the skin and held it out to her. “Will you come to me again?” She took the skin from his outstretched hands and hugged it to her breast. “I do not know.” His hand reached out of its own volition to stroke the skin. She flinched away from his reach. He drew back, overcome with guilt that he had so damaged her trust in him. He would woo her patiently and lovingly from now on—if she would only let him near her. “I will wait on the shore for you to return to me. I will always be waiting for you.” “I may not ever come back.” “I know. I will wait for you anyway.”

***** Maya lay on her back out at sea, the warm sun on her stomach. Making love with him again had scared her. Her feelings for him had been so intense and so passionate that she felt overwhelmed by them. She had to escape, to be by herself and to think. She could not make what would be the most important decisions of her life when her emotions were in such turmoil. More than anything else she needed peace, just a few moments of solitude amongst the ocean waves. Iain Argyle. She was in love with him more deeply than she knew a woman could love. It was not a passing fancy. She would love him until the day she died. She knew that now. They had made love one more time but it was not enough. It would never be enough. The more time she spent with him, the more time she wanted to spend with him. She would spend all her time with him if she could but she could not be a human all the time. He had tried to force that choice on her, but she simply could not make the leap. She had too much seal in her. She could not be a human always but that was not the end of the world. She could still see him when she chose, if he still wanted her. And, if he loved her deeply and was braver than most humans, there was another way that might be open to them.

***** Maya struggled up the steep path to the top of the cliff and over the grass towards the manor house. Her legs were growing stronger and surer with every foray she made into the world of humans. She looked down at them with some complacency. They would never be as powerful as her seal’s tail, but they were far from the useless appendages she had at first thought them to be. They plodded sturdily over the grass, carrying her upright with ease. And right now they were carrying her towards the house of her lover. She could ask no more of them than that.

Still, the manor house was set some way back from the shore, and she was tiring when at last she reached the graveled driveway that led to the front door. With weary feet, she plodded up the driveway. The manor house and its gardens were deserted, not so much as a groom or a gardener was to be seen. The front door was unlatched. She pushed it open and stepped inside. Her way was barred by the housekeeper, who stood in the hallway, her arms akimbo. “What have ye come back for?” the old woman demanded, her voice trembling with suspicion. She gave the woman a tremulous smile. “To see the master.” Still the housekeeper did not move. “Have ye come back to harm him? I’m warning you, if you have, you’ll have to get through me before you can reach him. I’m not defending what he did to you, mind. He did a wicked thing in stealing your skin, and that’s for sure. But he gave it back again and fair’s fair, and you shouldn’t hold a grudge. I won’t let you at him to hurt him.” Maya looked her straight in the eyes. “I did not come back to hurt him.” “You did not?” The housekeeper smoothed her hands on the apron tied over her ample hips. “Then what are you here for? And no lies, mind, or I’ll box your ears for you, selkie or no.” “I missed him.” The worried frown on the housekeeper’s face faded. “You have come back of your own free will, then?” “I missed him,” she repeated. The old woman’s face broke out into a huge, gap-toothed smile. “Well, I have to tell you that the master will be mighty glad to see you and no mistake. He’s been like a sick cat for days, moping and mooching around as if he had nothing better to do with himself.” She flapped her apron at Maya. “Go on with you, lass. He’s up in his bedchamber, mourning for you still, I’ll be bound.” Maya padded up the stairs to the familiar bedchamber. Her master was sitting in the chair by the window where she had once sat, a glass of brandy in his hand, staring sightlessly out at the gardens. The sight of him tugged at her heart. His face was drawn, with lines of pain etched deeply into his skin. He looked hopelessly, impossibly, alone. “You did not wait for me for long,” she whispered from the doorway. He looked up at her, his face registering his disbelief. “Maya?” She stumbled over to him on her aching feet, suddenly unsure of her welcome. She could never give him everything he wanted. Would he want her back on the only terms she could offer him? “You said you would wait for me forever,” she said, reaching out to brush a 1ock of hair away from his face. “And then when I return not an hour later, you are already gone.” He set the glass of brandy down on the side table. His fingers shook and a splash of brandy slopped out onto the bare wood. He mopped at it absentmindedly with his shirt sleeve. “Are you really there, or is this just a dream?” She touched the back of his hand lightly with her fingertips, and ran her hand up his arm to the back of his neck. “Does this feel like a dream? Or this?” she asked, as she held

him to her and pressed her lips to his. Her touch woke him from his stupor. He reached up with hungry arms and pulled her into his lap, smothering her with greedy kisses. “You are real enough,” he said at length, when at last he raised his head. “And you are more than I expected to see again.” He stroked her hair lovingly—and possessively. “Having you here with me is more than I dared hope for.” “I missed you,” she said simply, as she sat in his lap, luxuriating in his touch. She had missed the feeling of his hands on her body, the touch of his lips on hers but most of all she had missed the warmth he had surrounded her with on the cliff on the beach. Then, for the first time, she had known hope—hope that he cared for her as more than a curiosity, that he cared for her as she cared for him. “And I you.” He kissed her then, with a kiss so deep that he touched her very soul. She met him in his passion, letting him know without words just how much she longed for him, how much she needed him, and most importantly of all, how much she now trusted him. Her trust in him could not be put into words—all she could do was to show him how her feelings had changed. She had not yet had her fill of him when he lifted his head, his eyes filled with a mixture of hope and fear. “Does this mean you will stay with me? At least for a little while.” She swallowed nervously. How long she could stay with him depended now on him rather than on her. “For a while,” she agreed. “For tonight, at least.” His body relaxed a little, though his face was still sad. “We shall have the whole night together then. I am glad.” “There is a way… ” Her voice trailed off. What had she been thinking out there in the ocean? The sun must have gotten to her head and scrambled her brains. He would never agree to her suggestion. She was foolish even to bring up the subject. It was just dooming her to more heartbreak when he dismissed her tentative plan out of hand. To her surprise, he jumped eagerly on her words. “There is a way to what?” he demanded. She shook her head. “Nothing.” He would not be satisfied with her silence. “Tell me. Please.” She took a deep breath. He would refuse, she knew he would refuse, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. She owed it to herself at least to give him the chance to refuse her. “There is a way we could be together forever.” Fear for him made her hesitate. “But it would not be an easy way for you to take.” He remained undaunted. “Tell me what it is.” “You will not like it.” His face was stern as he looked down at her. “I can be the judge of that.” “If I were to marry you in the church, I would remain a human and never be able to turn seal again.” She shuddered at the awful thought of being cut off from the sea forever, and laid her head against his chest for the reassurance of his solid bulk. “I could not survive that.” He took her hands in his and squeezed them tightly. “We cannot be together that way. I would not ask it of you.”

She traced a pattern on the back of his hand with her fingernail. He had such fine strong hands. “But there is another way.” He pushed away from her a little so he could look into her eyes. “Another way? Tell me.” His voice was urgent. She gave a nervous swallow. “You could give up a small part of your humanness, just a small part, and become a selkie as I am.” Her heart was beating double time and her breath was short. Even just getting the words out and opening herself out to the possibility of a rejection by the man she loved was almost more difficult than she could manage. She could not hope for his acceptance, but still a refusal would hurt her more than she could bear to be hurt. “Then we could be together on land and on sea.” His mouth dropped open and it was a few minutes before he could speak. Myriad emotions chased over his face faster and more intensely than she could read them. “I could become a selkie?” he asked at last. She nodded. “You could.” “I could, in all truth, become a selkie?” he repeated. She shrugged. His disbelief pained her almost as much as an outright refusal would have. “Few humans have managed the change but it is possible.” “How?” She countered his question with another. “Do you love me?” “I do.” His voice was true and there was honesty in his eyes. “I love you more than any woman I have ever known.” Sincere though he was, that would not be enough for him to make the change. “Do you love me more than you love your life?” He nodded gravely, taking her question as seriously as she had asked it. “When I thought I had lost you to the sea, my life meant little to me. Without you I have no joy, no passion. Yes, I have found through bitter experience that I love you more than I love my life.” He smiled a bitter smile. “I could wish it were not so but there is no changing it now. Loving you is my fate and I cannot escape it.” His words brought a warm glow to her heart. “Then there is a chance that you may be able to transform.” “How do I make the change?” “The way to change is simple if you have but the courage to try.” She took a deep breath to give her the courage she needed to continue. “You take off your human trappings, your clothes, your shoes, your pocket watch, everything that sets you apart as a human, and you come with me into the sea. We swim out to deep water, far from shore. Then you must sit astride me and throw your arms around my neck and I will take you down into the sea. “You must not fear the ocean or panic as it closes over your head. If you let go of me when you find yourself under the water, you will surely fall off and drown. But if you can love me and trust me enough to cling on to my back through the currents, you will gain a new life. You will gain the power of a selkie.” “Then you will be my mate forever?” “Then I would be your mate forever. I would never leave you. Even in death I would walk by your side as the other half of your soul.”

He set her down off his knees and stood up. “I will come with you gladly.” His haste startled her. “Now?” He took her hand and pulled her to the door. “Now. While my love for you is singing in my veins like the song of a siren. I will lose a part of me to gain a new completeness.” She hung back on feet that still ached from her journey. “Do not be rash. Take some time to think on your decision. Your life will never be the same again.” “You have offered me a choice between a half life or a whole life. You have offered me a choice that few humans are ever given—the chance to live life as a different being and yet still to keep my humanity. What man would not leap at such a choice? My mind was made up the instant you spoke of it to me. Indeed, there is nothing to consider.” “Your family? Your servants?” she asked, temporizing madly. Was she really ready for this man to become her life mate so swiftly? She did not know. “Will they not find it strange that you have become a selkie? Will they not cast you out of their lives?” He brushed aside her fears with an idle wave of his hand. “No one need ever know our secret. When we are on land, I will still be the Earl of Argyle and you will be my Countess. No one will know, or indeed care, that we have another life.” He tugged her along. “Come to the sea with me now. Make me a part of you, as you will always be a part of me.” He stood naked and proud on the beach, his discarded clothes lying in a heap on the sand. The cool breeze against his skin did not ruffle him, nor did the bite of the icy water as it lapped against his toes. He was ready for this. He was more ready than he could ever be again. He did not fear death by drowning or by any other means. If Maya had wanted to harm him, she could have done so a thousand times over already, and he would never have raised a hand to save himself. He had spoken true to her. Without her, his life had no pleasure. He belonged to her as he had belonged to no other woman before. Maya, in her seal skin, slid past him over the stones and out into the deeper water of the bay. “Come with me,” she called, and with some surprise he realized he could understand her voice. He waded out into the deeper water until the waves were lapping against his chest. “Swim with me.” Maya called out in her hoarse seal voice. “Come and swim with me.” He lay on his back in the water and kicked with his feet until the land was far away. Maya was there beside him as she had promised. “Take hold of me,” she said. “And do not let go.” He threw his arms around her neck and clasped them together with an unbreakable grip. “I will not let go. I promise you.” Down she dived into the clear blue-black of the water. His arms clasped tight around her neck, into the clear blue water he dived with her, and he was not afraid.

About the Author Leda Swann is a senior executive in a large corporate, the mother of four young children, and partner of a wonderful man. She likes scuba diving, swimming, and any other sport that involves getting cold and wet on a regular basis. She is also the author of outrageously sexy romances, keeps fur-lined handcuffs in her bedside drawers, and fights hard to remember to remove the silk ties off her bed head whenever her parents come to visit. Leda welcomes mail from readers. You can write to her c/o Ellora’s Cave Publishing at 1056 Home Avenue, Akron, OH 44310-3502.

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