“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.”