Under His Skin (33 page)

A sense of purpose filled Brec’s body, instilling
a warmth
that came from determination instead of anger. Maybe there was something to be salvaged from the whole mess with Ana. Grabbing his skin, he pulled it over his body and dove into the water, taking on his seal form as he cut through the currents. He wasn’t a warrior. He was a healer. And he had a patient to check on.

By the time Ana trotted back to her cabin, she was weak physically and emotionally, completely spent from the greatest night of her life. A glorious ache in her muscles only served to remind her of all the running, jumping, and hunting she’d done all night and she couldn’t stop her tongue from lolling out of her mouth in a huge foxy smile.

The scent of blood pricked her ears forward. She jerked her tongue back into her mouth just in time to avoid biting it off when she snapped her teeth shut. Lowering her body to the ground, she hid in the snow as she searched for the source of the smell.

Ahead, on the path leading to her personal dock, were blood spatters.
Brec
.
Concern filled her heart as her mind replayed the scene from the evening before, the scene that had been completely forgotten in the rush of her new fur.
Brec, standing amidst the ruins of her skin.
The look of shock and pain on his face as she attacked him with his own blade.
His blood flowing from his skin where she’d cut him.

A heavy sadness fell over her body and she paused beside the pink snow. She remembered everything clearly now. Why had he been so angry when she’d got up to come find him? Hadn’t he himself laid his fur over top of her? Why had he snatched it away, as if she’d tried to steal it?

Her throat ached, but it was only a memory. She remembered the feel of his hands around her neck, choking the breath from her body. She should have woken up in pain, but she felt better than she had in a long time. He must have healed her before he left.

She raised her gaze to the sea. Whatever had happened, she owed him her life. He had returned her skin to her, had made her whole again. If she could, she would spend the rest of her life trying to thank him for that.

Suddenly, she froze. What if he wouldn’t accept her thanks? She’d attacked him, had cut him. The sight of her mutilated skin had snapped something inside her and she’d gone blind with rage. What if she’d driven him away forever?

She shot to her feet, unconsciously taking a few steps toward the water. What if she never found him again? How would she say she was sorry?

An image of Brec sprang into her mind. Sinfully handsome, the epitome of the seductive selkies of myth and legend, he’d had the body of a god and the kind eyes of a friend. He’d been good company even before she realized she wanted company. Ana stared out over the sea, wondering where he was now. The scent of blood tickled her nose and she looked back at the pink splotches on the snow in front of her. She’d hurt him. She’d hurt him and he’d left her. It didn’t matter where he was now—he wasn’t coming back.

She turned back to her cabin, creeping up the steps and in through her still open door. Her small body felt heavier somehow, dragged down by an invisible weight. Her heart pounded as she removed the fox fur and stood on human legs. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she stood there staring at the glorious fox fur hanging from her arms. It wasn’t a full fur, but it was perfect. The little belt was all she needed, a bridge to her old life. She’d gotten her fur back and she was overcome with the need to thank the man who’d given her this wonderful gift

“You must be pretty happy, huh?”

Ana turned to find Nu perched on the back of her couch, watching her with steady blue eyes. The frigid breeze blowing in through the door stung the wet streaks on her face left by her tears and she turned away from him to close the door. She wasn’t sure why, but meeting the pixie’s gaze was difficult.

“Of course I’m happy,” she lied.
I would be happier if Brec were here.

A shiver ran over her body, reminding Ana she was naked. Turning to the stairs, she made her way to her bedroom to get some clothes, ignoring the pixie flying right behind her.

“You don’t look happy,” he observed.

“I’m just cold,” Ana murmured.

The sight of her bed stopped her cold as a memory sprang to vivid life in her mind. She saw herself lying on her bed, carried there in Brec’s arms. She’d felt like she was drowning and she didn’t care. Her hope had been extinguished and she’d seen nothing ahead of her but a life devoid of hope, trapped in one body while the part of her spirit that remembered being a fox withered and died.

Brec had pulled her out of that. The heat of anger in his voice as he’d yelled at her to fight, the strength in his arms as he’d tried to shake the defeat off of her face. When he kissed her the touch of his mouth had stirred a passion inside her that pierced the soul-sucking despair pulling her down. Like a flower leaning toward the sun, she’d reached for that warmth, reveled in it. It hadn’t been the first time she’d had sex, but now she realized it had been the first time she’d made love.

And you threw it all away over a scrap of your old life.

Tears blurred her vision and she smothered a sob as she turned to her dresser and jerked out a clean pair of jeans and a red sweater. When she opened her underwear drawer she was attacked by another memory, this time an image of Brec standing amidst a pile of panties and laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation. She clenched her teeth against the tears. She missed the sound of his laughter.

“Ana?”

The gentle tone of the pixie’s voice only made the tears well up faster. Giving in to the urge to sniffle, Ana refused to look at Nu. Instead, she focused on getting dressed as quickly as possible so she could get the hell out of the room that reminded her so much of what she’d lost.

After dressing, she made her way down the stairs to her living room. In an effort to keep herself from thinking of Brec, she decided to concentrate on the snow that the open door had allowed the wind to blow all over her living room during the night.

She went into the kitchen and retrieved a bowl and a towel. Returning to the snow drenched living room, she began to scoop up what snow she could, drying what she couldn’t scoop up and wringing the towel out as she went. All the while she felt Nu watching her work.

Emotions she wasn’t ready to face stubbornly continued to bubble to the surface of her thoughts. Her brain traveled back in time to before she’d lost her fur. Back then, she’d thought she was happy. She was alone, but that was all right. She was independent, relying only on herself for contentment. Her gaze wandered over to the pixie, standing on the table in front of her. His blue eyes followed her every movement and she couldn’t help the question that leapt to her lips.

“Are you going to leave?”

Nu’s eyebrows met his hairline. A second later, a small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Do you want me to stay?”

Without meaning to, she nodded. The gesture felt right, so she kept it up. “Yes. I . . . I don’t think I want to be alone.”

Nu’s gaze softened with a kind sadness. “Are you sure it’s my company that you want?”

The warmth that had started to build in her heart froze. Tears burned her eyes as she struggled to draw a deep calm breath. “I thought my skin was all I needed,” she whispered. “I thought I would be happy.”

“And now?”
Nu asked softly.

The tears fell down her cheeks. “I’m not,” she admitted, a sob punctuating her sentence. She dropped the towel and covered her face with her hands as she gave in to the tears. Sobs jerked her body, coming even faster when she felt Nu land on her shoulder and begin gently stroking her hair.

“Ana, why don’t you go look for him?”

“Even if I could find him, it wouldn’t matter. He gave me the greatest gift in the entire world and I offered him nothing but violence in return.” She sighed, clearing her throat to speak through her tears. She could still see the blood dripping from his hand when she closed her eyes.

“You know, when you freed me from that cage, I said to myself ‘I’m going to make sure she’s happy before I leave her.’” He frowned. “If I’d known how difficult that was going to be, I would have said ‘I’m going to make sure she has what she needs to be happy before I leave her.’”

Ana laughed softly. “You were trying to make me happy?”

Nu nodded seriously. “It wasn’t easy either. You’re scary when you’re mad.” He shrugged. “Still, I knew that Brec would figure out a way to give you your skin back and the only way to make sure he stayed—despite your
charming
personality—was to give him a chance to be the big bad warrior he seems to fancy himself as. Telling him about the other skins you’d stolen gave him the perfect opportunity.” Nu frowned. “Didn’t really rise to that challenge though, did
he
? He’s about as scary as a rose petal.”

An image of Brec standing at the foot of her bed, knife in hand and rage burning in his eyes, sprang to Ana’s mind. “He can be scary.”

Nu shrugged.
“If you say so.”

Ana tilted her head, looking at the pixie in a new light. “I had no idea you were so conniving. How do you know so much about Brec?”

The pixie rolled his eyes. “He’s the healer for his people, a real big wig. He was in Mrs. Downing’s shop all the time. If I heard him say it once I heard him say it a thousand times, he doesn’t want to be a healer he wants to be a warrior.”

“Why? Why on earth would anyone with a gift for healing want to be a warrior?”

“He thought it would be more glamorous. It didn’t help when that female he was seeing kept making passes at his warrior-brother.”

A pang of jealousy stabbed Ana in the heart. “Brec has a mate?”

“No, she left him. As you would know if you’d been listening to me properly, she wanted a warrior.”

Ana scooted over to sit with her back against the couch.
Nu hopped off her shoulder to pace along the armrest.

“I think it would be wonderful to be a healer,” Ana said wistfully.
“To be able to take away pain and suffering, to have people come to you for help.”

“You could be a healer,” Nu pointed out. “You’ve been trying to heal your own fur for years, surely you’ve learned something?”

His words echoed in her head and Ana turned them around, testing their weight in her mind. She had learned a lot. Mostly about burns, but she’d learned other things too. She knitted her eyebrows together in thought. And she could always learn more.

“Maybe you could convince Brec to train you,” Nu suggested excitedly, seeming to warm to the idea.

Doubt dampened Ana’s stirring excitement. “He’s only seen me at my worst. He’s seen me lie and steal, he’s seen me give up on life completely.” Her cheeks flamed with embarrassment. “He’s seen me melt into a babbling puddle of nothing.” She pulled her knees to her chest and crossed her arms over them, dropping her forehead to her arms. “What reason would he possibly have to agree to train me?”

“How about the fact that he loves you?”

Ana snorted.
“He doesn’t love me. Sex isn’t love.”

“Oh, yes, he just wants you for your body,” Nu said sarcastically. “That’s why he jumped your bones the first moment he got here.”

“Yeah, I really had to twist his arm.”

Nu narrowed his eyes. “If he wanted sex he would have taken it when you so graciously offered to let him in the shower with you.”

Ana’s cheeks burned at the pixie’s bold argument and she cleared her throat. “I—”

“You don’t owe me an explanation,” Nu interrupted. “I’ve never been robbed of what made me, me. I don’t know what it’s like to be trapped in a human body, with human senses and human weaknesses.” He tilted his head. “But don’t let what you or Brec have done in the past scare you away from the future you want. Brec is a healer, at his core he wants to help people. If you ask him to train you, I don’t think he’ll say no.”

It was hard not to believe him. She wanted to believe him, wanted to run to Mrs. Downing’s and beg the nosey woman to tell her how to find Brec. Even now her traitorous mind tortured her with images of the selkie, a fantasy of his face lighting up with pleasure when she asked him to train her. She wanted to believe that all she had to do was ask, and she’d get everything she’d dreamed of.