Under His Skin (18 page)

“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.”

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.”