Kitty’s Greatest Hits (15 page)

She was attracted to the selkie. That was a statement, an observation, something empirical with explanations having to do with the fact that she was a young woman and he was a young man. A very handsome young man. Hormones were identifiable. Controllable.

So why couldn’t she seem to control the way her body flushed every time she entered the aquatics lab? Rick had mentioned magic. But the center was here precisely because magic didn’t exist, only biology that had not yet been explained.

Biology. She needed a cold shower.

*   *   *

Wednesday night.

She turned around after setting down Marina’s supper and tripped on the catwalk. No, she didn’t trip—Marina had reached through the bars, grabbed her ankle, and tipped her over. The mermaid was stronger than she looked. Robin sprawled across the catwalk between the tanks, too surprised to move, lying with the meat of her palms digging into the steel treads.

The selkie was by the bars, right beside her, reaching through. He touched her hand. Even though his hand was damp and cool, Robin thought her skin would catch fire. He took her hand, brought it through the bars, and kissed it, touching each knuckle with his lips.

When she didn’t pull away, he grew bold, turning her hand, kissing the inside of her wrist, tracing her thumb with his tongue, sucking on the tip of a finger. She hadn’t imagined she could feel like this, all her nerves focused on what he was doing to her. She closed her eyes. Nothing existed in the world but her hand and his mouth.

She was on duty. This was not allowed. She should stand up and leave. Write a report about the cooperative behavior of the selkie and the mermaid. Marina was laughing, quietly now, from behind her rock.

Gradually, Robin slid forward so that her face was at the bars. She shouldn’t be doing this. The security cameras recorded everything. The selkie kissed her. His lips moved slowly, carefully tasting every part of her mouth, letting her taste him. His hands cupped her face. If it hadn’t been for the bars, she would have let him pull her into the water.

He drew away first. The bars kept her from reaching after him. He swam a few feet away, holding her gaze until he reached the door of the cage, where he lingered, waiting. The message: If she wanted to continue, she’d have to open the door.

Well then, that was it. She lay on the catwalk, her hand still thrust through the bars, dangling in the cool water.

She used the bars to pull herself to her feet. She trembled a little, her heart racing. Nerves, that was all. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. She could still feel his lips.

She planned to go straight to the next room. The control box to deactivate the electronic locks on the cages was at the top of the stairs. A single move. That’s all it would take. Marina made a sound, part sympathetic, part mocking.

She walked past the control box, into the next room. Her lips pursed, her blood rushed.

“Lieutenant?” Rick said.

Ignoring him, she continued to the side room that held the bank of a dozen TV monitors, showing the view from cameras focused on every enclosure in the center. Jones the dog was gnawing on a rawhide bone. The griffin was scratching the steel wall of its cell. The unicorn stood with a foot cocked, nose to the floor, sleeping. In the aquatics lab, Marina was basking on her rock, brushing her hair with her fingers, probably singing as well. The selkie, still in human form, swam back and forth in front of the door, like he was pacing. Like he was waiting.

She shut off the cameras, rewound the tapes, and erased the evening’s footage. All the monitors went to static. She left a note for the day shift complaining that the security system was on the fritz, that she’d tried to fix it and failed.

On her way back to the aquatics lab, Rick called, his voice harsh. “Lieutenant Green, this isn’t you. This is the magic. Selkie magic. Stop and think what you’re doing.”

She paused at the door. She was sure she knew what she was doing. But she’d read the stories, and Rick was right. Male selkies had a predilection for seducing women. This wasn’t her, it was the magic.

And she wanted it.

The hand that pressed the button for the lock to the north tank was not hers. Not really.

The door to the selkie’s cage opened with a small noise. She kept her back to it, her breath short, her eyes closed with the realization of what she was doing. She’d worked so hard, stayed in control her whole life, and now she did nothing but wait. She gripped the railing by the stairs.

She heard dripping, water rushing off a body climbing onto the catwalk. Still, the touch on her shoulders came as a shock and made her flinch. He must have sensed her anxiety, because he brushed her arm gently, stroking lightly with fingertips until she relaxed. Letting her grow accustomed to him, as if he were taming a wild animal. Then both his hands touched her, moved along her arms to her shoulders. Her shirt grew damp with his touch.

He kissed the back of her neck at her hairline, below the twist she kept her hair up in. His breath was hot on her skin. Her body melted, slumping into his touch. He pulled her back, away from the stairs, slipped his body in front of hers, and pressed her against the cage. She was limp, unseeing. She let him guide her.

He nuzzled her neck. Her nerves tingled with every touch. Overwhelmed, she moaned softly. His hands moved to the buttons of her dress shirt. He had them open before she realized it, and his hands were inside, cupping her breasts, fingers slipping under her bra.

Instead of putting her hands on his shoulders to push him away, like she should have done, Robin clutched at him, her fingers slipping on his slick skin. She dug her nails in for a better grip.

“Hmm,” he murmured and pinned her against the bars. It was the first sound she’d ever heard him make.

He pulled her arms away just long enough to take her shirt off. His hand slid easily over her skin, and her bra fell away. His kisses moved from her neck, down to her breasts. She wrapped her arms around his head, holding him close.

She bent, unconsciously trying to pull away from so much sensation, so much of him, but the bars kept her close to him. She couldn’t get away. She didn’t want to. Skillfully, more deftly than she could have thought from someone who lived in water and didn’t wear clothes, he opened the zipper of her skirt, slipped his hands into her panties. One hand caressed her backside, the other—played. Oh—she struggled to kick her shoes off, to get her skirt and pantyhose off, to give him better access. He helped.

Her clothes gone, they were naked together. Skin pressed against skin. His erection was hard against her thigh, insistent. He paid attention to nothing but her, and she was overwhelmed. Locking her against him, he eased her down to the catwalk.

They were going to do it, right here on the catwalk, her clothes awkwardly spread out to protect her from the steel. Marina softly sang something in Irish that was no doubt very bawdy.

Robin felt like she had saved herself just for this moment.

*   *   *

The next evening, she brought hay to the unicorn’s cell.

“Here you go. Come on.”

The unicorn stayed at the far end of the room, its head down, its ears laid back, its nostrils flaring angrily.

Robin stood, arms limp at her sides. Of course. She left the hay, closed the door, and continued her rounds.

She found a note in the lab from the day shift explaining that the problem with the security system had been fixed by simply changing out the fuses, and if it happened again she should try it. The officer in charge sounded testy that they’d lost a whole evening’s worth of surveillance. Not that anything around here ever changed.

Except that it had, everything had changed, and Robin didn’t want anyone to know it. She shut down the cameras again, and removed fuses from half the monitors as well, blinding them.

“Lieutenant,” Rick said to her as she removed his pints from the incubator and prepared his supper. “Look at yourself. This isn’t like you. He has enchanted you.”

“I don’t want to hear it,” she murmured, sliding his beakers of blood through the slot in the window.

Rick didn’t look at them; instead, he pressed himself to the window, palms flat against the plastic, imploring. “He’s using you. He doesn’t care about you, he’s only manipulating you.”

She looked at him. Not his eyes, but his cheekbones, his ear, the dark fringe of hair. Anything but his eyes. “Just like you would do, if I opened your door and let you seduce me?”

Which wasn’t fair, because Rick had never tried to seduce her, never tried to take advantage of her. Not that she’d ever given him the opportunity. But he’d always spoken so kindly to her. He’d spoken
to
her. Until now, she had never thought of Rick as anything but the elegant man who was supposed to be a vampire, locked in a prison cell.

“I’d never hurt you, Robin.”

Now when he looked at her, she flushed. Quickly, she turned toward the aquatics lab.

“Robin, stop,” he implored. “Don’t go in there. Don’t let him use you like this.”

She gripped the doorway so hard her fingers trembled. “I’ve never felt like this before,” she murmured.

She hadn’t meant for him to hear, but he was a vampire, with a vampire’s hearing. He replied, “It’s not real. Let it go.”

“It feels … I can’t,” she said. Because she had never felt like this before, she had never felt so good, so
much
before, it was like a drug that filled her up and pushed every other worry aside. A part of her knew Rick was right, that if this feeling was a drug, then she’d become an addict in a day and she should stop this.

The rest of her didn’t care.

When she reached the aquatics lab, the selkie hung on to the door of the cage, his dark eyes shining in anticipation. As soon as she’d given Marina her supper, Robin pressed the button for the lock.

*   *   *

Friday night.

Colonel Ottoman left a message on the answering machine saying he’d be back Saturday. So this was it, for her and the selkie.

She lay in his arms, on the rock in the aquarium. He played with her loose, damp hair, running his fingers through it. She held his other arm around her middle. He was strong, silent. He wrapped her up with himself when they were together.

She couldn’t let it end.

“We’ll go away, you and I.”

He looked away and laughed silently. He kissed her hand and shook his head.

It was a game to him. She couldn’t be sure what he thought; he never spoke. She didn’t know if he couldn’t or wouldn’t.

“Why not?”

He traced his finger along her jaw, down her neck. Then he nestled against the rock and closed his eyes.

She couldn’t hope to understand him. Colonel Ottoman was right, they weren’t even human.

His sealskin lay nearby, on the rock where he had discarded it. She grabbed it, jumped into the water, and swam to the door. He splashed, diving after her, but she climbed onto the catwalk and slammed the door shut before he reached her.

She clutched the skin to her breast. Glaring at her, he gripped the bars of the locked door.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t do this.”

He pressed his lips into a line and rattled the door.

She put the skin out of reach of the cage and pulled on the skirt and shirt of her uniform. All expression of playfulness, of seduction, had left the selkie. His jaw was tight, his brow furrowed.

Skin in hand, she ran to the main lab where she found a knapsack stashed under her desk. She needed clothes for him, maybe an extra lab coat …

“You know how all the selkie stories end, don’t you?” Rick leaned on his window.

“They’re just stories.”

“
I’m
just a story.”

She smirked. “You’re no Dracula.”

“You’ve never seen me outside this cage, my dear.”

She stopped and looked at him. His eyes were blue.

“Robin, think carefully about what you’re planning. He has enchanted you.” The vampire’s worried expression seemed almost fatherly.

“I—I can’t give him up.”

“Outside this room, you won’t have a choice. You will throw away your career, your life, for that?”

The official acronym for it was AWOL, not to mention stealing from a government installation. Her career, as far as Robin could tell, amounted to studying people in cages. People who defied study, no matter how many cameras and electrodes were trained on them. The selkie had shown her something that couldn’t be put in a cage, a range of emotions that escaped examination. He’d shown her passion, something she’d been missing without even knowing it. She wanted to take him away from the sterility of a filtered aquarium and a steel cage. She wanted to make love with him on a beach, with the sound of ocean waves behind them.

“I have this.” She held up the knapsack in which she had stuffed the sealskin and left the lab to stash it in her car and find some clothes.

For all its wonder and secrecy, the center was poorly funded—it didn’t produce the results and military applications that the nearby bionic and psychic research branches did—and inadequately supervised.

She knew the building and video surveillance patterns well enough to be able to smuggle the selkie to her car without leaving evidence. Not that it mattered when Rick would no doubt give Colonel Ottoman a full report. She waited until close to the end of the shift to retrieve the selkie. He came with her docilely, dressed in the spare sweats she gave him.

Marina sat on her rock and sang, her light voice echoing in the lab.

The selkie lingered for a moment until Marina waved good-bye. Robin pulled him to the next room.

“Sir,” Rick, hands pressed to the plastic of his cell, called. The selkie met Rick’s gaze unflinching. “I know your kind. Treat her gently.”

The selkie didn’t react. He seemed to study the vampire, expressionless, and only looked away when Robin squeezed his hand.

Robin lingered a moment. “Good-bye,” she said.

“Take care, Robin.”

Impulse guided her again, and she went to the control box for the lock to Rick’s cell. She pushed the button; the lock clicked open with the sound of a buzzer. The door opened a crack. Rick stared at the path to freedom for a long moment.