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.