Simeon sucked the water from her nose and mouth, then broke the surface and carried her through the chambers to one boasting a raised bed made with quilts of sea moss and one slick sealskin, like velvet beneath her as he laid her down there and fell upon her. As he had done before, his fingers traced the outline of her nipples and flitted over every orifice from ear to anus, feeling for her sexual pulse. Meg scarcely breathed.
Please the Powers, do not let me wake here now,
she prayed.
The bed was wreathed around with odd white roselike blooms whose heads bobbed about as if they were humans sharing secrets. “What are those?” she asked, pointing.
“Um?” he grunted, gathering her against him. “Silt roses, they are called. They breathe like mortals breathe, and are quite annoying. Pay them no mind.”
“If they are so annoying, why do you keep them, then?” Meg wondered.
“They purify the air, and they have a pleasant scent. All life in the sea has a purpose, little witch. Enough! Leave them to their tittering. Our time grows short….”
He took her lips in a fiery kiss that seared her tongue. His skilled lips blazed a trail along her arched throat to her breasts, then between to the hollow of her navel. Meg arched herself against him, lifting her hips, raising her mound to receive his kiss. But he did not kiss her there. Instead, he dipped his fingers in a thick substance that filled a spinney conch shell standing on the chamber floor beside the bed. How curious that she hadn’t noticed it before. It had a silvery sheen about it, and she stiffened as he slathered some between her thighs, parting her nether lips and rubbing it into her vulva, massaging it the length of her virgin skin.
“What is that?” she breathed, shrinking back as he stroked her. “What do you do…’Tis cold!”
“It will be warm in a moment,” he murmured, still palpating her sex. “It is a remedy eons old. It will dull the pain and give you much pleasure. I am surprised you are not familiar with pearl salve. The sirens grind the pearls with water herbs and rendered fat to bind them. The secret recipe is well guarded. It numbs the flesh slightly and heightens sexual urges. You will feel a pleasant tingle.”
Meg spread her legs, writhing under his touch. All that he said was true. She was drenched in fire from his touch. He dipped his fingers in the salve again and rubbed it on his penis, then worked the silvery ointment into her nipples in concentric circles, rolling the aching tips between his thumbs and forefingers until they grew hard and she shuddered in anticipation. The substance had a pleasant aroma. It smelled of musk and ambergris—of him.
He mounted her. How she wanted him to enter her as he had the woman on the beach. She wanted him to fill her to the root of his sex, just as he filled that consort, in one smooth thrust riding her rhythm. That this act would put her in grave danger on the Isle, and the mainland as well, didn’t signify in that wonderful, terrible heartbeat of time when he stretched her virgin skin with the head of his penis until it gave and admitted him to the seat of her sexuality.
A roar left his throat and spread through the air, like ripples in water amplified by the deep, as he filled her. The cry had scarcely left his lungs when it was answered by a sorrowful spate of siren song. Meg knew it well. She had heard the sirens singing on their rocks in the night. Once heard, there was no mistaking the plaintive, mournful wail of the siren song. But he was moving inside her, touching tender flesh never touched before, calling her back to the present. Just as he’d said, there was no pain, and she abandoned herself to the ecstasy of his volatile embrace.
Meg groaned with each of his thrusts. How strange it felt to have a man inside her. Was this what it would really feel like if the dream were real? His moves were fluid, like the water on the far side of the tunnel. His rhythm was the rhythm of the sea. He was the selkie now, moving to the pulse of the deep, and every place he touched, every inch of her tender skin, was on fire.
Her breath caught in her throat as he brought her to climax, then climaxed himself, filling her, emptying every last drop of his seed into her as her inner walls contracted and squeezed him dry. Groaning, he swooped down, covering her lips with his own. But it wasn’t a kiss. He seemed to be breathing into her mouth again, blowing his sweet breath into her lungs. All at once she felt herself lifted. As if he couldn’t bear to be parted from her, he hadn’t withdrawn himself, and he carried her thus, with her legs wrapped around his waist, back through the chambers to the tunnel. Then they were surging upward. The sawing motion of his long muscular legs raising her up, swimming with her through the tunnel joined as they were, riddled her sex with unstoppable waves of orgasmic fire. Her loins, belly, and rigid thighs ached with it. Every cell in her skin was charged with sensation. Then just before they broke the surface, he sucked the water from her nostrils again, and everything went black.
Meg woke alone in her loft chamber. She was naked underneath the down coverlets. That wasn’t unusual. She often slept in the nude. Her whole body tingled from her dream lover’s touch. She was flushed from her burning cheeks to the tips of her toes. Sliding her hands the length of her body, her fingers flitted over her nipples, still hard and tall. She followed the indentation of her narrow waist and the curve of her thighs. Her skin was scorching to the touch, as if she had a raging fever. Her fingers probed lower, parting her nether lips, searching for her virgin skin. Instead, her fingers slipped inside the fissure that had always barred them. Something warm and moist coated her fingertips. She probed herself deeper, and adrenaline surged through her body, prickling her scalp with gooseflesh. There was no mistake. She was a virgin no longer.
Meg withdrew her hand and examined her fingers. They were smeared with blood and something else…the residue of a thick pearly ointment that smelled of the sea, of salt and musk and ambergris—
of him!
She sat bolt upright in the bed and winced at the dull ache in her genitals. Her erect nipples bore traces of silvery sheen, and the long sun-painted hair falling over her shoulders was tangled with seaweed. She gasped.
It hadn’t been a dream!
M
eg swung her feet to the floor. Her belly was swollen. And why wouldn’t it be? The selkie was gargantuan. He had stretched her tight virgin quim to bursting. She padded to the window, where it had all begun, and gazed at the strand below. There were no revelers now. But for the gentle sighing of the surf as it rolled up the beach, all was still. Not even the phantom surf horses thundered toward shore. The waves had died, breathless and spent, as was often the case in the wee hours before dawn.
The moon was sliding low in the indigo vault above, its beams making a wider swath in the black water rippling toward shore. It lit the night to day. Meg snatched up her hooded cloak, lying just where she’d left it draped over a chair, and swirled it over her shoulders. She took no time to dress. What she had in mind to do must be done naked.
Climbing down the loft ladder, Meg paused. There was no sound save her aunt’s loud snores. Aunt Adelia would sleep until first light if nothing untoward awakened her. There was no time to lose, and Meg quickly quit the cottage and padded toward the shore.
The damp sand along the hard-packed berm was like balm to her feet; they barely smudged the surface. She padded closer to the ragged edge the spent combers had left behind on the strand. Removing her cloak, she set it aside on dry land and walked naked into the water, into the docile waves lapping at the shore. Surf lace rushed through her toes, sucking the sand beneath them back into the ocean. She waded in to midcalf. Scooping up some of the cool saltwater, she bathed her genitals, washing away all trace of her virgin blood. The magical ointment the selkie lord had slathered over her vulva had lost its pain-relieving qualities. The salt would soothe the soreness after the initial burn, and she squatted down, spread her nether lips, and let the surf rush into her. Groaning in relief, she let the sea stroke her until the cold and salt and rhythmic strokes of the restless waves had numbed her aching sex.
Surging to her feet, she reached toward the heavens as the water cascaded down her body, over her breasts, her hips and thighs, returning to the sea. But for the sighing of the waves, all sound stilled around her. The waterfowl had not yet awakened to soar and sail and perch upon the boulders near and far that later selkie seals would climb upon to warm themselves in the sun. Would the Lord of the Deep be among them? Would he fornicate with his consorts—flaunt his prowess before her as he had done before. A pang of jealousy pierced her heart. How could she bear seeing him do to another what she had watched him do before…what he had done to
her?
All the fever the sea had drained from her body came rushing back, just as the waves rushed toward the shore. She had no right to him, this enigmatic creature of the deep. But somehow he had taken her beneath the waves—allowed her to see and feel and breathe where no mortal could. She had to see if she were still able. That was why she’d come.
Wading out breast deep, she sprang off the silt underfoot and plunged beneath an incoming comber. The ocean floor fell away drastically, a sheer drop in the coral reef. She entered the void. Her natural instinct was to hold her breath, and it took a moment for her to relax enough to free herself from old restraints, both mental and physical, to perform the test. Then opening her mouth and nostrils, she took a breath.
Water flooded her nose and rushed into her lungs. She couldn’t breathe. Panic stricken she thrashed about in the water in a vain attempt to close her breathing passages. Her balance was gone, her rhythm broken. Her head felt as if it were about to explode. Ordinarily, she was a strong swimmer, but raw fright that she was about to die cancelled common sense, and she began sinking into the abyss.
White pinpoints of blinding light starred her vision. She was losing consciousness. The sick, queasy weakness that precedes a fainting spell overwhelmed her, nearly taking her under until, out of nowhere, something large and strong butted her in the stomach, driving the water from her lungs, propelling her toward the surface.
Stunned, she tried to grab on to whatever the creature was, but she couldn’t get a grip upon its smooth, slick skin. In her anxiety, she lost what little grip she’d gained and started to sink back into the underwater chasm, but the creature butted her again, harder this time, and she broke the surface gasping for air, clinging to the long, bullish neck of a giant seal driving her toward shore.
Water spouted from the creature’s nostrils, a fine spray blowing into the predawn mist as it parted the waves. A bestial outcry left the seal’s throat as it nudged her to safety in the shallow water swirling around them at the edge of the strand. Coughing up seawater and gasping for air, Meg glimpsed the creature’s eyes before it turned back toward the deep water. They were almond shaped, large, silvery black with red reflections. They were
his
eyes. In a blink, he turned and dove back beneath the surface of the water, but his scent remained behind—salt and musk and ambergris, not the unpleasant fishy odor associated with ordinary seals. It threaded through her nostrils arousing her—making her remember.
Tears welled in her eyes as she dragged herself up onto the shore. Kneeling, she pounded the surf with both hands balled into white-knuckled fists. He had made her his own. Why did he bring her back—twice! She should be grateful that he’d saved her life, but all she felt was abandoned despite the fact that she’d asked him—
begged him
—to do just what he’d done. Had she failed in some way—displeased him? It hadn’t seemed that way when his life was living inside her. Whatever the cause, she felt downhearted as she dragged herself out of the water.
Taken with spates of wheezing and coughing, Meg tried to clear her throat. Her nostrils stung from the salt, and her ribs ached from the heaving. Staggering over the fine pebbles and seaweed to the safety of damp sand, she turned back, casting her glance toward the sea. The first rays of daylight had begun to blush the horizon crimson, but no sign of life appeared in the water or the salt-sweet air. A whiff of the dawn breeze smelled pleasantly of him. She drank it in deeply.
Climbing higher, she glanced about for the cloak she’d discarded earlier. It was a few yards off, and she padded toward it. Through the morning mist, she saw something lying on top of it, something white. Skittering to a halt alongside, she groaned and dropped to her knees. It was her night shift, neatly folded atop the cloak. Snatching it up, she held it to her nose. It smelled of the sea, of salt—of
him.
She sobbed into the soft lawn and blackwork embroidery, though her sobs were empty and dry.
“
Megaleen!
” Her aunt’s voice knifed through the stillness. The sound of it must have roused the waterfowl, for Meg hadn’t heard their morning calls until that moment. She leapt to her feet and wriggled into the shift, tossed her cloak over her shoulders, and trudged toward the hard-faced woman standing arms akimbo at the edge of the berm.
“Coming, Aunt Adelia,” Meg called out. Her eagle-eyed aunt was the last person she wanted to see in that moment, when her sex was still pinging, swollen from the selkie’s throbbing bulk inside her, that had filled her, stretched her to admit his gargantuan penis. She could still feel him hammering inside her, molding her sheath to his thick, curved contours. Her breath caught remembering, reliving his thrusts. The fingers of a blush crawled up her cheeks. Would Aunt Adelia know? Would she see?
She would have to be blind not to,
Meg thought, donning her most innocent mask. It would not be easy, when each breath she drew from the fiery dawn mist filled her nostrils with the haunting scent of the Lord of the Deep.
“Bathing naked in the sea?” Adelia scorned. “What can you be thinking, exposing your body in such a way for others to view?”
“I was hot, and I couldn’t sleep,” Meg said sweetly. “And there was no one to see.”
“Um,” Adelia growled. “And what of the scrying pool, eh?” she said. “You know the shamans gaze into it at dawn and dusk. Suppose one of the elders—”
“I hardly think they do so seeking me, Aunt Adelia,” Meg said.
“You forget. Your initiation is soon. The summer solstice is nearly upon us, and you are not nearly ready to take your place among the priestesses. The shamans will be watching, have no doubts of it, niece.”
Meg didn’t want to think about that, not with the selkie’s ardor still thrumming through her veins and moistening her sex. Would the throbbing never cease? How she longed to clutch her mons area to still the vibrations that threatened to betray her, but she dared not then, in front of her aunt. And there was something else…Would there be no end of splinters of thought nagging just beneath the surface of her consciousness to torment her? He had sent her back! Yes, she had begged him to, but that was before she consented to be his consort. What did it mean? How had she displeased him? Again and again the questions rang in her ears. Had he ruined her just to kick her aside? Was she nothing more than some mindless conquest? The selkies’ insatiable passion for female humans was legend. Had she become just another casualty of the deep? She was loath to believe it, but there she stood, alone and deflowered in the aftermath of sex like no other imaginable, wearing the nightrail the selkie had returned to her neatly folded atop her cloak on the hard-packed sand. It could mean only one thing. He had spoiled her for any other. He had formed her sexual epicenter into the glove to sheath his enormity—custom fitted her to it. No other would suffice now, and he was gone! She was ruined.
“Why the sour face?” Adelia probed. “You are up to something. Do not think I cannot see it.”
“I am not liking that I am spied on,” Meg recovered, sulking. “I think I shall pour squid ink in the scrying pool. Let the shamans ogle me through that!”
Adelia threw back her grizzled head and laughed outright. She smelled of fish and peat and unwashed hair. Meg would not come too near. The foul-smelling woman spoiled Simeon’s scent still rising from the fine lawn night smock underneath her cloak.
The old woman reached to take Meg’s arm. “Come,” she said. “There is no time for you to change. We are behindhand. Just because your uncle Olwyn is away does not mean the chores must stop. It is time to bait the eel pots. We have a business to run, or had you forgotten? Fie, such a face! I will help you, now come….”
Meg trudged along beside her aunt. No, she hadn’t fooled her, but she hadn’t betrayed herself either. She’d forgotten about the scrying pool. She would have to be more careful in future. But what future could she hope to have now? She needed to know more about the selkies—much more. Aunt Adeila would know something, certainly more than she. Deciding upon tapping that knowledge, she was glad Adelia had offered her help. It would give her just the opportunity she needed.
They had reached a small shack behind the cottage, and Adelia lifted the wooden bar and threw it open to the morning mist. A strong fishy smell laced with tar from the nets stored there rushed up Meg’s nostrils. She grimaced. Inside beyond the threshold, the sandy floor was divided by wooden planks into three shallow bins, each housing a selection of horseshoe crabs at different stages of their development. Meg gazed down at the creatures with their horseshoe shaped shells, many legs, and long spinney tail-like appendages. Some were just babies, others just having molted once had been graduated to the middle bin, and then there were the mature ones, large and formidable looking, though they were quite harmless if one knew how to handle them. It was these that Adelia approached. Seizing one of the creature’s tails, she swung it up on a wooden chopping block alongside and took one of the cleavers from its bracket on the wall.
“Well?” she said, glancing over her shoulder at Meg. “Grab a cleaver. There’s room for two on this block. The eel pots should have been set at first light. What are you waiting for?”
“I…uh…” Meg stumbled over her words. Chopping up horseshoe crabs to bait the eel pots had never bothered her before. Now even the slightest injury to any creature that lived in the sea was repugnant to her. Uncle Olwyn had harvested the crabs along the strand after the spring mating and brought the females up to lay their eggs in the sandy floor of the shack, where they grew and hatched and molted until they were mature enough to kill for bait. She’d done it many times. She’d even come at sundown and fed the creatures worms and mollusks to fatten them up for the eventual kill. But now she could not force her hand to reach out for that cleaver in its bracket beside the door. “I…can’t,” she murmured, shaking her head wildly.
“What?” Adelia cried. “Have your courses come upon you again that you act so peculiar? Silly chit! You’ve never been squeamish about chopping
horsefeet
up for bait before, my girl. What ails you?”
Meg ignored the first of that, though it gave her a new worry. What if she were with child? Simeon had certainly reached far enough inside her to plant his seed. She rubbed her belly absently underneath her cloak. No! She couldn’t think about that now—not with Aunt Adelia standing slack-jawed, cleaver suspended over the wriggling horseshoe crab. Clawlike feet churning, the poor creature was trying to right itself with its spinelike tail, which served it as a rudder for just such occasions. Meg couldn’t bear to look.
“I…I’ll fetch the eel pots,” she said, darting back outside to where the semicircular traps of wood and wire mesh were stacked alongside the shed. As long as she didn’t have a hand in the slaughter, she could bear it. What was happening to her?
The sound of the cleaver slicing through the horseshoe crab’s hard shell ran her through as if the blade had struck her as well, and she took a moment to compose herself before returning carrying several of the eel pots. Two more trips and they began baiting the traps with pieces of the horseshoe crab and loading them into a wheelbarrow.
“Hurry with that,” Adelia snapped. “And do not forget to bring back yesterday’s yield. ’Tis market day. We will be set upon by mainland folk as well as our own before the sun reaches the zenith. Our customers want fresh eels, niece, and you know they will not come near the Isle once the sun begins to sink. Enough there! Come. I will help you load the skiff.”