Rainlashed (5 page)

Her captor stopped all of a sudden and she ploughed into him, the breasts she had recently been admiring squashing flat against his chest. He shook her off him impatiently. “You can’t walk up to the house like that,” he muttered at her.

She looked critically down at her body. Although she was no expert on how human females ought to appear, she didn’t think there was anything offensive about the way she looked. Her body was not scarred or maimed or disfigured in any way. “Why not?”

Ignoring her question, he shrugged off his coat. “Cover yourself with this,” he ordered, draping it over her body.

It was cold and itchy, not like the soft fur of her own skin. She shrugged it off and let it fall in the mud at her feet. “I don’t like it.”

“You don’t have to like it. You just have to wear it.”

She held out one pleading hand to him. “Please, give me back my own coat. I will wear that gladly.”

His eyes shot barbs at her. “Pick up my coat,” he ordered.

Sulkily, she picked the dull, lifeless article from the mud between one finger and thumb and held it away from her body.

“Good. Now put it on.”

Even more sulkily, she draped it gingerly over her shoulders as he had done before.

“Not like that. Put it on properly.” He picked it off her back and held it open for her. “See, your arms go in here,” he said, as he manhandled her into the coat. “And the buttons do up like so.”

The coat felt cold and clammy against her body, as if she were trying to climb into the body of a dead animal.

He took her hand and pulled her after him again. “Come, let’s go.”

She shivered with revulsion as she stumbled after him, holding her arms out from her body so that the dead thing touched her as little as possible. “I do not like it.” Tears were prickling the back of her eyelids and she blinked them away furiously. She did not want this human to see her weakness. The knowledge would give him another weapon to use against her.

Slowing his pace, he turned his head to look at her. “You are not just being difficult,” he muttered to more to himself than to her. “You really do not like it, do you?”

She shuddered as she concentrated on taking tiny, stiff-legged steps to avoid having the coat bump against her legs. “It feels alien. Dead. As if I were draping the skin of my dead brother around myself.”

“You don’t have to wear it for long. Just until we get inside the house.”

She plucked it away from her body with stiff fingers. “Why do I have to wear it at all?”

He gestured to the figures in the distance. “There are people around.”

“So?”

“So you must cover yourself.”

“Why?” She held the coat open so that her breasts swung free. Ah, the cold sea air on her skin felt good. “Do you not like looking at my naked body?”

“Of course I like to look at it. Any man would.” He reached over and closed the coat over her chest, his fingers lingering over the swell of her breasts as he buttoned it up. “You are very beautiful in your human form. That is the problem.”

“Why is it a problem if you find me pleasant to look on?” Really, she would never understand these humans. They made life so complicated. “Is that not better than if you were to find me somehow lacking, or even repulsive?”

He shook his head. “Are all selkies are contrary as you are?”

She shrugged helplessly, only wanting to understand him, not anger him.

“Just wear the coat until you are inside. Then I will allow you to take it off.”

She like the coat less the longer she wore it, but she supposed she could bear the thing on her back until they were inside this man’s house. “How far away are we from your house?”

He gestured into the distance, where she could see a group of scattered buildings perched on the south side of a gentle, grassy slope. “No more than a mile.”

A mile on her human legs? It would be nothing for her to swim, but to have to walk so far? She did not know even if she
could
walk so far. She gave him an assessing stare. “I can take it off as soon as I am inside?”

“You can.”

Humans were tricky creatures, as she had found to her cost. That simple promise wasn’t enough for her. “And never put it on again?”

“And never wear it again,” he confirmed.

She looked at him suspiciously out of the corner of her eyes. “It will please you if I wear it until then?”

“It will please me greatly.”

His assertion finally satisfied her. She had to please him in every way possible to earn her skin back the faster. “I will wear it until then. But not a second longer.”

* * * * *

The manor house he lived in was grander by far than she had expected—a grandeur she had heard about only in old fairy stories that her mother and grandmother had told her. She had heard plenty of real tales about humans too, mostly from the sisters about the human lovers they had taken, but none of them had featured castles on cliffs with tapestries on the walls.

Most of the sisters’ stories told about one-roomed peat huts with smoky fires in the middle of them. They had spoken of floors of packed mud and beds of straw that rustled noisily with every movement. The only food they had mentioned was coarse oatmeal cooked with water and flavored with a pinch of salt and the smoke from the fire. The skill of their lovers, however, they always claimed, had more than made up for any discomfort they had experienced as a human. She only hoped they had not been exaggerating.

At any rate, their stories had not been prepared for the sight of this man’s house. The walls were thick and made of stone, and the floors were wide planks of wood, and covered in patterned rugs. She touched one with the tip of her bare foot, but moved hurriedly off it again. It too, felt cold and dead like the coat she was wearing. “You live here?”

“I do. I am the master here.” He pushed open a door and ushered her into a room. “Stay here.” And he was gone.

She heaved a sigh of relief. Now that she was inside, at last the hated coat could go.

With feverish haste she pulled at the buttons, desperate to free them and rid herself of the cloying dead thing covering her body.

The buttons came undone more easily this time—she was getting used to working with her human fingers. With a sigh of satisfaction she dropped the coat on the floor at her feet, stepped away from it, and stretched her arms above her head. Ah, it felt better to be in her own skin again, even if was just her human skin and not her seal skin. This borrowing the skins of others to wear on her back was an evil human habit.

She rubbed her arms briskly to get rid of the feel of the coat, as she moved over to the huge glass windows that looked out over a pretty garden full of stiff-looking bushes and brightly colored flowers—so different to the waving seaweeds and bright anemones growing in the rock gardens of the ocean. It felt odd not to be able to reach out and touch the plants like the full-blooded men she could see out there tending to them. She was used to living in the open sea without walls or ceilings, where the seaweeds and anemones just grew where they pleased, with no one to tend to them. Being enclosed in such a small space felt strange. Not necessarily bad, she decided after a moment’s thought—just different.

Her discomfort with the coat was soon dealt with and a new discomfort started to build in her again. She moved her arms to rub her stomach, and then her breasts. She was no longer concerned about getting rid of the feel of the coat—she was simply enjoying her own touch. Her body had not forgotten the tantalizing glimpse into human pleasures that awaited her.

And now that she was comfortable again, her body was demanding more. Far more.

Her nipples started to peak under the touch of her hands, budding tight and hard again. She ran her palms over them, shivering with pleasure at the sensation. Humans were lucky to have hands—seals could not touch themselves like this or give themselves pleasure in this way.

The humans tending to the garden were frankly staring at her by now but she paid them no heed. Seeing the master had already done the worse by taking her skin, these other men could do her no further harm. Besides, the glass of the window was between them. They could look all they wanted, but they could not touch her.

The window ledge was low to the ground and just the right height for her foot. She bent her leg and placed it on the narrow ledge, opening her wet pussy to the air.

She ran her hands over her breasts one more time and then slowly moved them down her body until they were at the juncture of her thighs. Her thighs were trembling at the thought of what was soon to come.

She stopped there for a moment, savoring the delicious sensation of anticipation. With one hand she reached out and took hold of the curtains to steady herself, while with the other she stroked the soft hairs that covered her mound, teasing herself, not yet giving in to the desire that was building in her, stronger by the moment.

The two human men tending to the garden had given up all pretence of working and were shuffling closer to the window, their eyes wide open and their mouths agape as if they had never seen a naked woman before, let alone a naked woman touching herself.

She smiled at them as she raised her leg a little higher, opened her legs a little wider, and rubbed her clit with a long, lazy stroke that made her almost purr with pleasure. The men smiled back tentatively, both of them drawing up close to the window as they reached inside their breeches with eager hands. They were young men, dark-haired and dark-eyed and as alike as if they were twins. Handsome and strong, and quite a respectable size too, by the looks of the stiffening cocks they were drawing out of their breeches. The sisters, she was sure, would go wild for the touch of the men’s hands on their naked bodies and the thrust of their cocks into their wet and ready cunts.

Though she was intrigued with the idea of an audience, she was quite content with her own exploring right now. She didn’t need the touch of a man just yet. She arched her back with delight, delighting in her chance to explore her human body so intimately.

Ah, she decided after only a few minutes, pleasuring herself as a human was decidedly better than any sexual experience she had ever had as a seal. No wonder the sisters raved about it constantly. No wonder they were always taking the risk of discovery and the risk that a human would steal their skins in order to enjoy such a wonder.

The gardeners were intent on enjoying themselves in a similar fashion. As she stroked herself lazily in front of the windows, the two of them were playing with their own cocks, rubbing them up and down in a frenzy of enjoyment, as if they could not wait to reach their climax.

She enjoyed watching their haste, and hearing the gasps and pants they made, loud enough even to reach her through the glass. She enjoyed seeing their cocks, swollen and purple, standing to attention at the sight of her nakedness. Her pussy dripped with her own excitement as she watched them stroking up and down. Seeing them get so enthusiastic at the sight of her touching herself made her even wetter and more excited than ever.

They were almost close enough to touch. Indeed, if it weren’t for the glass of the window that barred her way, she could have reached out and touched them.

She was ready to touch them now, and to have them touch her. She wanted to touch them, she wanted to feel the softness of their skin on her hands, she wanted to touch them and lick them and taste the salt of their cocks. She wanted them both all over her, touching and licking and kissing and fucking her both at the same time.

She leaned over and touched her breasts tentatively against the glass. The coldness made her nipples peak, and she shivered. It would feel just as good to press her overheated pussy against the glass too, but she could not bear to stop stroking herself for long enough to try out the sensation.

As she thrust her breasts harder against the glass, the two young men came to a peak at almost exactly the same time, splattering the glass of the window with their creamy white semen, and wringing out every last drop of come from their softening cocks with eager hands. She could hear their eager grunts of pleasure through the glass of the window, making her juices flow more copiously than ever.

She stroked herself just a little faster, picking up the pace with tantalizing slowness, reveling in the knowledge that nothing could stop her now. The sight of them climaxing had brought her so close to the edge of pleasure. Arching her back, she let out a long, low moan of pure animal ecstasy. She was so close…

Chapter Four

The skin. First of all he had to protect the skin. He shut the door behind the selkie and paused in the entryway, the fur held tightly in his hands. As long as that was safely hidden, Maya belonged to him.

He would not feel satisfied until it was completely out of her reach—so well hidden that she would not be able to find it and escape his control. He had to get it off his property now. Right now.

He strode out into the stable yard and called over his head groom. “Get the carriage ready. I want you to leave for Edinburgh posthaste.”

The head groom doffed his cap. “Yes, my Lord. I will make the horses ready for you right away.”

“I shall not be going to Edinburgh. You will be.”

The groom looked surprised, but he knew better than to say anything other than another, “Yes, my Lord.”