Under His Skin Read online

  Brec opened the door and jerked Ana outside, ignoring her squeal of pain. A gust of frigid air blew the heat from his body and he shivered, wishing he had time to grab Ana a hat, scarf, and gloves. They were going to have to hurry or she’d have to contend with frostbite in addition to the lacerations on her fingers. Frustration seized him. He didn’t know how badly her fingers were cut. Fingertip injuries always bled so badly, it was impossible to tell. Unfortunately, the black-eyed predator behind them made it impossible to stop and examine her now. Tucking Ana against his body, he slammed the door behind them and started half-dragging her to the water.

  “Wait, wait, we can’t just leave him in there!”

  Brec paused and jerked his head back to stare at Ana in shock. “What are you talking about? You saw him, he’s barely holding on to his appetite. Do you want him to eat you?”

  “If he’s up and walking, then why can’t he change form and go back to the sea?” Ana demanded.

  The desperate tone in her voice confused him, but Brec didn’t have time to play twenty questions. He pressed the gauze into her hand.

  “Bandage your fingers and keep walking while you do it.” He turned and started walking again, relieved when Ana followed him after only a moment of hesitation.

  “I don’t want him running loose around my home,” Ana insisted. “I don’t trust him.”

  “And you shouldn’t,” Brec said, holding on to his patience. “We’re getting food for him to keep him from eating you, that’s not a situation that’s meant to inspire trust.”

  “What if he goes through my things,” Ana worried. “What if he—”

  Brec whipped around, an idea leaping into his mind and stopping him in his tracks. He searched Ana’s surprised face as hope burned to life inside him.

  “You’re afraid he’s going to find the skins, aren’t you?”

  Ana’s mouth opened slightly before she clamped it shut. She stared at him, not saying a word, but Brec could see the answer in her eyes. He smiled.

  “The skins are in your cabin,” he murmured to himself. “Good.”

  Ana swayed on her feet and Brec had a momentary flash of confusion as it looked like she was going to be sick.

  “Why are you so afraid he’ll find them? He’s a predator, he wants meat, not skins. Even if he found them, he wouldn’t touch them.”

  Again, Ana opened her mouth as if she wanted to say something. The desperation in her eyes drew Brec in, filling him with a sudden need to know what was scaring her. In the short time he’d known Ana, he’d gotten glimpses of a good woman, someone who had a knowledge of healing and the nonjudgmental nature that should always accompany such skills. So why was she still hiding the skins? And why was she so afraid of someone finding them?

  “Ana, why did you steal those skins?” he whispered.

  Ana turned away, but Brec shook his head, grabbing her arm and pulling her back to him. She gasped as her body collided with his, the wrist of her injured hand caught in his grasp between them. He held her hand up, putting her gauze wrapped fingers between their faces. The bright red of her blood soaking through the gauze drew both their gazes and for a moment, Brec let the silence drag out.

  “You have it in you to be a healer,” he said quietly. “Someone who helps people no matter who they are or what they’ve done. In a lot of ways, that makes you a better healer than me.” He turned his gaze to her eyes, waiting for her to look at him. She stared hard at her hand, obviously fighting not to meet his eyes. “Ana, look at me.”

  Slowly, her gaze slid to his face. The conflict he saw in her eyes gave him hope, gave him another glimpse of a woman who was uncomfortable with the bad things she’d done. A woman who might be looking for a way to make up for it.

  “You’re such a mystery to me, Ana. One minute I’m certain you’re evil, a woman who steals skins from others, leaving them to suffer misery you can’t even imagine.” She whimpered and tried to look away, but he got in front of her, keeping their gazes locked. “But then I see another side of you. Like right now, you seem so upset that you’ve hurt people. I know you want to make things right, and I’m telling you I can help you. You just have to trust me.”

  Misery contorted Ana’s face and the glitter of tears sparkled in her eyes. She stared at him, her muscles tense and her breath trapped in her throat. Brec’s heart beat harder as he dared to hope that he finally gotten to her. Maybe she was finally ready to confide in him.

  A clicking sound from off in the distance broke the spell between them. Panic seized Brec as he looked up to see Mano standing in the open doorway to Ana’s cabin. Even a couple hundred feet away, he could see the hunger on the toos’ face, could see how close he was to losing it. A shark in the water could smell a single drop of blood a mile away. On land, a toos’ senses were nearly that good as well. Brec glanced down at Ana’s injured fingers. And right now, the toos had a hell of a lot more than a drop to work with.

  Cursing the toos and his timing, Brec growled and pointed to the small rowboat tied to the dock. “If he comes out of the cabin, climb into the boat and row a little ways out. I’ll keep an eye out and if I see the boat move, I’ll come up.”

  Ana glanced back at the toos, still standing in the doorway. “He looks hungry.”

  “He won’t follow with that injury. Even if he were so inclined to come out here after you, he’d faint from using that much energy. He’s too weak to be a threat.”

  “Then why are you so concerned about the boat?” Ana challenged.

  “Just a precaution.” She still didn’t look convinced. Brec tried to compose his face into a semblance of reassurance. “I’ll be quick,” Brec promised. He threw his skin over his shoulders. “Trust me. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  Chapter 15

  Ana fell to her knees on the dock, her hand thrown out from her body as if reaching for the transforming selkie. The strangled scream that had escaped her throat seemed to echo in the air around her, mocking her with her own pain. Her gaze locked on the water where Brec had vanished.

  In that moment, she hated him.

  Her mind replayed it over and over. Brec standing tall and proud on the dock, swinging his skin over his shoulders as if it were nothing. The whisper of the thick seal-skin assaulted her ears. The glistening of the slick black and silver fur burned her eyes. When he’d leapt into the air, his human form swallowed by his seal-skin, it had taken every ounce of her strength not to follow him into the water. She wanted to escape this human form so badly, her heart had nearly ripped itself from her chest during Brec’s transformation. To be so close and yet so terribly far was just . . . unbearable.

  A fine tremor ran over her body, a shaking born of sadness, loss, and the blood-boiling anger that can only be brought on by jealousy of the purest kind. Ana glared down at the dock, bracing her hands against the rough wood as she let her head drop and her eyes close. The pain in her hand throbbed, adding to the chaos threatening her sanity. Every day Brec reminded her of her thefts, rubbed her face in the pain she’d caused others. He used his own temporary separation from his skin as evidence that he understood the pain she inflicted, but he knew nothing of true pain.

  Her jaw ached as she clenched her teeth hard enough to bruise. He hadn’t watched his life crackle and blacken in the fireplace. He hadn’t heard someone screaming oaths of love when all they felt was infatuation with beauty and the unknown. He hadn’t lived for two long soul-crushing years, trying anything and everything to recover even a shadow of what he’d lost. True desperation and pain were alien concepts to him.

  A sob escaped her throat and tears burned behind her eyes. No more waiting. No more biding her time, hoping the selkie would give up. No more trying to convince him to leave and let her return the skins on her own. Cold determination spiraled up inside her, tightening her hands into fists. Toos or no toos, she was going to run back to her cabin, grab the spell from her room, and lock herself in the basement. If the spell failed, then it wouldn’t matter
what happened to her. It would all be over anyway.

  Shoving herself off the dock, Ana scrambled to her feet and turned to run back to her cabin. As she whirled around, a masculine voice sputtered a sound of surprise. Ana jerked her gaze up to find Mano staring at her with wide eyes. The bloody white sheet the fisherman had brought him to Brec in was wrapped around him, but as he raised his hands, he released his grip on the sheet and the icy February wind lifted it from his naked body. A panicked scream leapt from Ana’s throat as the toos’ hands closed around her wrists.

  “Let go!” she shrieked.

  “I—”

  Kicking out as hard as she could, she was rewarded with a grunt of pain as Mano released her wrists. Following through with her advantage, she shoved his chest as hard as she could. Mano hissed as he hit the dock, but Ana didn’t stop to watch. Turning on her heel, she dashed to the boat.

  The wood sent a painful vibration through her body as her feet landed hard on the bottom of the small craft. The cold weather made her blood sluggish and for a second she felt like her skin would shatter with cold from the impact. Breathing through the pain, her gaze roved the gently swirling sea around her, searching for some sign of Brec’s seal form. It wasn’t until she risked a glance back at the toos lying on the dock that she realized her mistake.

  Why did I jump into the blasted boat instead of making a run to the cabin? The toos is lying out here incapacitated, the selkie is in the sea. She stared toward her front door, her jaw hanging open slightly as the boat drifted farther from the dock. I just gave up the one chance I had at getting rid of the blasted healer. Anger and frustration pinched her features as she rubbed her hands over her face. This wasn’t possible. She couldn’t be this stupid.

  She lowered her hands, clenching her teeth as she stared at the twenty feet of water between her and the dock. Her gaze darted to the oars fixed to the sides of the boat. Maybe she still had time. She sat down hard and snatched the oars from their settings, her heart racing with a surge of adrenaline. Dipping them into the sea, she braced herself to row like she’d never rowed before. Surely, she could cover a few yards before Brec—

  A silvery fish popped up over the side of the boat, suspended horizontally in the air. Shocked and a little disoriented by the forced abrupt switch in thinking, Ana stared at the fish for a moment before she realized it wasn’t hovering in the air. It was being held in a seal’s mouth.

  Brec stared at her, his large black seal-eyes boring into her for a moment before turning to the dock and the fallen toos. Her plan for escape ruined, Ana had nothing to focus the new wave of adrenaline on. Her body buzzed with the residual effects of her anger and panic and she just sat there holding the oars without moving. The whole world seemed to have tilted crazily on its axis and her brain had yet to make sense of it.

  When Brec finally dropped the large fish in the bottom of the boat it broke the spell. Hysterical laughter bubbled up from somewhere deep inside her and to her everlasting horror, Ana burst out laughing. It was just too much. Her perfectly ordered, goal-oriented life had been completely turned upside-down. In less than a minute, her simple plan to run back to her cabin had ended in her sitting in a small rowboat, staring at a seal dropping a large fish at her feet. She held onto her sides, doubling over as Brec threw back his skin and climbed into the boat.

  Like a door slamming shut, the laughter stopped. Ana’s breath froze in her chest as she stared at the selkie. The sun glinted off the sea-soaked skin of Brec’s pelt as he slipped it off his body, the skin seeming to caress him like a lover. Ana watched his face and even if she hadn’t been looking for it, it would have been plain as day.

  Joy. Brec radiated it. As he slid the skin down his body, letting it fall over one arm before sweeping it up into a bundle, his entire body relaxed. Ana’s gaze locked on his face as he settled himself in the boat, keeping his skin tucked firmly behind him. Brec was a handsome man under any circumstances, but in this moment he was gorgeous. Free from the strain and conflict she’d seen on his face the past two days, he finally looked as she imagined he should look. Calm, confident, and in control. The sight touched something inside her, warming her heart despite the reminder of her own loss.

  “Are you all right?”

  His question caught her off guard and for a moment Ana couldn’t think of what to say. In the past two years, she’d only felt jealous anger and pain when she witnessed the happiness of another skinwalker reveling in their transformation. But right now, in this moment, she looked at Brec and felt happy for him. She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to ward off some of the cold caused by the icy wind over the sea. With all the chaos that had recently come into her life, the last thing she needed was the confusion of new emotions.

  Brec glanced back at Mano. The toos lie on the dock, perfectly still.

  “I can’t believe he made it out here. Even with his enhanced healing ability, the shock of having his fin cut off plus the bloodloss without the consumption of any food should have made him too weak to move beyond your kitchen.”

  Ana snapped out of her emotional reverie, her brain zeroing in on one particular detail. “Did you just say he had his fin cut off?”

  Brec nodded as he picked up the oars and began rowing them toward the dock. “Yes.” He titled his head at her. “You saw the wound in his head. I thought you knew what had happened to him?”

  Ana shook her head, her brain still struggling to keep up. “I thought he’d been attacked, maybe bitten. The cut looked deep, but there weren’t any bone fragments in it, I thought maybe something took a bite out of him and swallowed the pieces of his skull.”

  “No, the toos don’t have any bone along that line. That’s where their dorsal fin is. Even when they take human form, they keep that dorsal fin on top of their heads and the mouth on their backs.”

  The rowboat tapped the dock and Brec lowered the oars. Ana sat there mulling over the new information as Brec tied the boat to the dock.

  “I’ve never met a toos before,” she murmured, half to herself.

  “They like their privacy,” Brec agreed, a hint of anger crawling into his voice. “If the fins on their heads weren’t such a pain to hide, they’d probably come up onto land for more victims instead of just feasting on my people.”

  Ana stared at the toos’ body. Somehow the anger in Brec’s voice seemed wrong when the man was lying not ten feet away from them, unconscious and naked.

  “He’s lucky those fishermen found him.”

  Brec paused with his hands on the dock. He stared at her with his eyebrows furrowed. “Ana, they’re the ones who cut it off.”

  Shocked, Ana let her jaw drop as Brec hauled himself out of the boat. “What do you mean, they’re the ones who cut it off? Why would they do that? Were they selkies? Was it revenge? Why would they bring him to you to be healed?”

  At first Brec didn’t answer her. She watched as he bent over Mano, quickly inspecting him for further damage. After a moment, he picked up the unconscious man and after a little awkward stumbling, got his balance and began walking back toward Ana’s cabin.

  “Can you bring the fish with you? I’ll explain everything after we get him back inside.”

  Ana stared down at the bottom of the boat at the dead fish. Images of men walking around on land with dorsal fins on their heads and gaping shark jaws on their backs danced across her mind, colored with blood and gruesome musings on what had happened to Mano. What a terrifying experience he must have had. She’d lost her skin to fire, but she hadn’t been wearing it when it was burned. What would it have been like to have part of her body brutally cut off? Would she have survived as Mano did?

  Shaking her head at the turn her life had taken, Ana bent and picked up the fish by it’s thick tail. Setting it down on the dock, she climbed up the wooden ladder, retrieved the fish and started walking after Brec. With all the excitement surrounding the toos, perhaps Brec would be distracted enough for her to retrieve her skin.

  She stared dow
n at the fish, her mind drifting back to Mano. First she would find out what had happened to him. If she could be of any help, she’d assist Brec in nursing the toos back to the point where he could safely return to his home in the sea. Maybe if she did something good for someone else, Alaunus would see it make her spell would work.

  Chapter 16

  Brec shifted Mano in his arms, trying to keep his head up as much as possible so the blood didn’t rush to his wound. Juggling a man with a mouth full of teeth on his back was one of the more challenging things he’d ever done, but as long as he kept one arm just under Mano’s shoulders and the other under his knees, he should be fine.

  Of course, it might still be prudent to keep his attention on the toos instead of letting it wander to the peculiar woman walking behind him carrying a dead fish. Brec’s shoulders stiffened as he fought the urge to turn around and look at Ana again.

  As it always did, the caress of the sea had cleared his mind. After swimming in the icy depths, hunting fish and just enjoying having a simple goal again, he felt sharper and more alert. For the past two days, he’d been viewing Ana as an enemy. He’d struggled with his conscience trying to figure out a way to force information from her without making his skin crawl and his sensibilities crack. Every time she spoke a kind word, or showed a vulnerable emotion, his plan wavered and his goal became more difficult to attain. He’d never stopped looking at her as the enemy—until now.