Rainlashed (13 page)

All women loved showing off their jewelry to the world, and he would willingly drape Maya in diamonds if that would make her happy. He would even find the biggest and most creamy white pearls in all of Europe and have them strung on a necklace for her to remind her of her home in the sea.

Although he greatly preferred his estate in the wilds of Scotland to the noise and bustle of the city, he would take her to London to show her the sights. Even though he hated squalling women with a passion, he would take a box at the opera for Maya to display her finery to best advantage. God help him, but he would even dance with her at assemblies if she requested it.

He ran his hand over her flat stomach. How he would love to see that stomach growing and swelling with a babe.

The sudden thought surprised him. He had never thought overmuch of having children before now. Filling a nursery had always seemed a distant duty that he would have to perform one day. With the naked Maya tied to his bed completely at his mercy, the thought suddenly became intensely attractive. How he would love to plant new life in her womb, have it take root and see her swell and grow with his seed.

A child would bind Maya to him more strongly than anything else would. For a loving and caring woman like she was, even the giddy lure of a sparkling diamond necklace would pale in comparison to the unbreakable bonds of maternal love.

He moved his hand to gently cup her breasts, almost intoxicated with the thought of his son or daughter suckling on her pink-tipped nipples, drawing sustenance from their mother.

The day she gave him a son, he decided there and then, he would marry her. Though he was a lord of the realm and she was naught but a selkie with no dowry but the wind and the waves, he would take her as his wife.

Such a promise would surely bind her to him for all time.

Chapter Nine

Maya lay still in her bonds, watching under hooded lids as her captor lazily ran one hand over her stomach and her breasts. Naked and bound as she was, he seemed hardly concentrating on her, lost in thoughts that she could not even begin to guess at.

Only one thought was occupying her mind—escape from this man she had grown almost to care for. Escape back to the sea where the knowledge of his perfidy could not twist in her stomach like the blade of a knife.

The most sensible course of action would be to pretend she had fallen for his tricks and to swear to stay with him of her own free will. Her heart rebelled against this plan, though. Even to save her life she refused to lie and cheat as he had. Such behavior would make her no better than he was. She would not be able to live with herself.

No, she would rely on her wits and her cunning and escape the bonds that would be the death of her.

She refused to dwell on what she would do once she had escaped the shackles that bound her, or how she would escape his clutches and find her skin. There would be time enough for that when she was once free.

“What do you want from me, man?”

He continued lazily caressing her breasts but she could tell by the more rapid movements of his hand and the faster pace of his breathing that he was no longer preoccupied with his own thoughts. She had his full attention now. “Your company.”

“My company?” she parroted, with a disbelieving sniff. No man tied a naked woman to his bed just for the sake of her company. He would take her and mate with her whether or not she wanted him to but she was determined that she would not respond to him this time. Though he may be able to force her body he could not force her will. He could not make her welcome him into her body if she did not will it so.

She wished only she did not want him with such hunger. It was doubtful whether she could stay indifferent and uninterested under his hands. They knew her body too well, and despite his lies and his deceitfulness she still wanted him too much. It hurt her to admit it but even now, tied up and at his mercy, she could feel her body responding to his nearness.

He took his hands away from her body and let them fall by his side. “I want you to talk to me. I want you to tell me about your life under the sea. I want you to tell me about yourself, about your needs, about your wants and desires.”

Now that he was no longer touching her, she missed the feel of his hands on her body. The knowledge that she was tied up at his pleasure and helpless to resist him only fuelled her fantasies.

How perverse she was, that he could treat her worse than an animal but still she would lust after him. Her peaked breasts tingled with the remembrance of his touch, the roughness of his hand against her tight nipples, the strength of his palm cupping the fullness of her breasts. “Why?” She did not speak the questions that were trembling on her lips.
Why do you not mate with me now? Why are you waiting to take your pleasure with me? Do you no longer desire me?

His face was a closed mask. Had he sensed her resistance, or was he as oblivious to what she was thinking as she was to his thoughts? “I am curious.”

She had so many wants and desires she would like to share, but she would not share them with this man. He had deprived her of her freedom and refused to give her back her skin. However wet she could feel herself getting at the thought of having his hard cock inside her again, she would not admit to the man that she wanted him.

She licked her dry lips with her wet tongue. She would not admit that even now, spread-eagled helplessly as she was on the bed, that she was thirsty for the taste of his cock in her mouth, thirsty for the salty taste of his seed spurting from his throbbing cock. She hated herself for still wanting him, still caring for him even now. “You have tied me to the bed so I cannot move. Why should I talk to you?”

“To make the time pass more swiftly?” he suggested, the flicker of a smile on his face.

If looks could kill, she would have skewered his heart on a pikestaff. “I care not how long you keep me here,” she lied, surreptitiously rubbing her thighs together to ease the desire itching inside her. How
could
she lust after a man whom she hated so? “Make up stories to amuse yourself, if it pleases you.” If only he had proved worthy of her love, how well she could have loved him.

“I do not want to make up my own. I want to hear yours.”

She remained stubbornly silent.

“There were five of you on the beach, if I counted right. Three of them took to the water the moment I appeared.”

The three sisters
, she thought to herself. How right they had been about the dangerous pleasures that a selkie could find in a human body. She thought of the stories they had told and the fantasies they had shared with her on the rocky shore, and her breathing quickened. How they would laugh to hear that she had fallen under the spell of a human and lived out her wildest fantasies with him. She would have her own stories to tell them in her turn, if she ever managed to escape.

The thought of escape sharpened her lust-drugged mind for a moment. She ought to be arousing his lust and using it to manipulate him in letting her go but somehow she could not deny the insistent demands of her own body. At this moment, she needed sex more than she needed her skin, even if the choice ended up killing her. She needed to lose herself in his body one last time.

“Who was the other selkie on the beach? The young one who could not run as fast as the rest of you. The one whose skin I captured?”

Still fighting her all-consuming lust, she feigned an all-consuming interest in the pattern of the plaster on the ceiling and did not look at him.

“Why did you give up your skin in place of hers?” He moved to stroke her hair, tangled as it was by her earlier struggles. “She must be dear to your heart.”

His fingers tugged at her hair, pulling at her scalp and she tossed them off impatiently. She did not want to like the feel on his hands on her body or the warmth of him stroking her hair. She wished he would take her roughly, make her cry out in pain as well as with pleasure as he satisfied his lust. She wanted him to fuck her with every ounce of strength in his body until she was limp and sated and she wanted to hate him back with every ounce of strength in her even as he satisfied her desires.

“I would not have kept her skin, you know,” he remarked conversationally as if he had not completely shattered her world into pieces with his words. “She was only a child. I would not have harmed her.”

All her blood rushed from her head, leaving her so dizzy and lightheaded she had to close her eyes to keep the darkness at bay. In that moment she truly
did
hate him. “You would not have kept Caity’s skin?” she whispered into the blackness that threatened to engulf her.

“Who is she, this Caity?” His voice was truly curious.

She could not open her eyes and face her tormentor just yet. “She is my sister,” she whispered, feeling as if she had just suffered a terrible defeat. “My little sister who I will never see again.”

“You must love your sister very dearly.” His voice sounded wistful as if he would like a share in such a love.

Deceitful words flowed too easily from his lips. Words—nothing more than empty words. She did not want to believe him, or everything she had suffered and was still to suffer would have been in vain. “You really would not have harmed her?”

“I wanted you from the beginning.” His voice held the suggestion of a wry smile. “You and only you. I would have given Caity back her skin. I would never have kept her.”

He was a liar as all humans were. They were not honorable and truthful like selkies but as slippery as a blind eel in the dark. She should have learned better not to trust a word any of them said. “You lie,” she baldly. To keep a hold on her sanity and head to believe that he lied.

“Look into my eyes, Maya, and read the truth in them.”

She lifted her eyes to his, but she would not believe the honesty and pity she saw written there. “You would have kept her,” she maintained stubbornly. “And that would have killed her.”

“Be honest with yourself, Maya. You know that is not so. That is your fear talking, not you.”

A seed of doubt crept into her certainty and she could not remove it. “You were not above bargaining with the life of my baby sister to get what you wanted.”

“I did not suggest the bargain,” he protested, sounding guilty nonetheless. “You offered yourself to me freely.”

“If what you say is true, I had no need to give you my skin in exchange for hers. You were wrong to take advantage of my fear.”

“I accepted what you offered, that is true,” he admitted. “I wanted you beyond words. Can you blame me for grasping at the glimpse of paradise you showed me?”

Her belief was weakening. After all, he had not been deliberately cruel to her. Though he had refused to give her back her skin, he did not want to hurt her. He just did not understand that she could not live without her skin. Her greatest danger lay in his ignorance rather than his cruelty. “I did not trust you. Though you may not have meant her harm, I could not leave my sister to her doom.”

He seemed satisfied with her grudging acceptance. “Tell me about Caity.”

“What do you want to know about her?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Is she your only sister?”

“No, but she is the youngest of us. My mother died not long after she was born and I took over caring for her. She has always held a special place in my heart.”

He ran an idle hand over her breastbone, in admiration rather than in desire. “Are there many others who share your heart? Do you have a favored mate among your seal kin?”

A selkie mate? She wanted to lie to him, but her honesty and the unexpected lack of confidence in his voice forbade her. “Not anymore,” she admitted.

“You did once?”

She closed her eyes in remembrance. “When I was very young there was a fine young seal bull I fancied, but he never looked at me.” It was strange to think of him now, but the knowledge of his indifference had caused her much heartache at the time.

“Was he mated with another?”

“I do not know. Perhaps. At any rate, I was too young for him to take my infatuation seriously. And then one day…”

“One day?” he prompted her.

“One day he was caught in the net of a fisherman, dragged on to shore and clubbed to death.” The grisly pictures from her memory flooding into her mind made her shudder. “I had followed him without his knowledge and was watching him from the rocks of a nearby reef. I saw it all.”

“How you must have hated them.” His voice was soft, almost caring.

“I did. I tried my best to harness the water and the waves to do my bidding to capsize their boat and drown them but they would not obey my feeble commands. The worst I could do to them was to break a small wave over their bow and splash their faces.” She smiled somewhat bitterly at the memory. Time had mended her broken heart, but it would never quite heal that particular wound.

He misunderstood the cause of her pain. “That must have been small recompense for the loss of your beloved.”

“At that moment I knew that I would never be a true storm-selkie,” she explained. “I know it was selfish of me but that loss was greater by far than the death of the selkie I fancied. If the waves would not come to me to avenge the loss of the selkie I loved, they would never come at my command.”