The Selkie

by Rosanna Leo

  Every so often, though, the worry crept back into her face. “Maybe we shouldn’t be stopping to eat,” she said. “What if the shooter followed us? What if he’s here right now? Shouldn’t we be trying to figure out who he is? Maybe we should go to the police. What if one of these people figures out … what you are?”

  “We’re fine for now, Maggie. There’s no way he’d attack in the middle of a crowded pub. I wouldn’t have brought you here if I thought he’d followed us. And, as for what I am, I’ve always kept a low profile on the island. Nora was the only one who understood my true nature. Others may think I’m different, odd even, but it’s not as if I advertise my selkie self.” He brushed his fingers against her cheek, hoping for another smile from her. “Besides, never let it be said that I would not feed a starving woman.”

  She did smile, a little. He knew she was worried. By Thor’s cavernous crack, he was worried too. He didn’t know who the shooter was, or who the thieves at Nora’s were, but he knew they’d be back. His concern only intensified when he allowed himself to remember things he’d seen in the past. Why, he’d witnessed humans brought to near lunacy over a selkie skin. He knew the lengths that some would go to in order to obtain one.

  That’s why he couldn’t bring Maggie back to Nora’s house. It’d be the first place they’d look. No, they had to keep moving and had to find the skin.

  And he had to keep her safe, although it didn’t seem so much a promise to Nora

  anymore, as it did to himself.

  He pulled her to him and kissed her with all the desperation he suddenly felt, leaving her with an adorable, stunned look on her face. Surely they could forget about the wannabe skin thieves for a little while. Besides, he was on a mission now.

  He’d convince Maggie he was a selkie if it killed him.

  *

  Maggie let her guard down for a moment and allowed herself to just enjoy being in that pub with Calan. It was easy to do. There were lots of colorful locals to watch and a band had started playing some rousing fiddle music. And, of course, being with Calan was an event in and of itself.

  Every female eye was upon him, and it was no wonder. He was sinful to look at. Lust on a plate. And every woman in that bar was obviously hoping to get served a healthy portion. With his long hair, soulful face, and biceps that made his leather jacket bulge, he was easily the most scrumptious man in there. Probably on all of Orkney. Heck, all of Scotland.

  And his beautiful brown eyes were trained only on her. Amazing.

  If only he didn’t believe he was Shamu’s distant cousin. It was such a shame for someone so sublime to be so certifiable.

  She was considering the possibility of living in the cuckoo house with him when a waitress approached. Drooling.

  The woman addressed only Calan, as if in a stupor. “What would you like, handsome? Please tell me it’s forty-year-old blondes with a couple of kiddies at home.”

  He merely grinned, as if he got that response from women all the time. “A bottle of red wine, please, pet. Oh, and a shrimp plate, the buttered scallops, the lobster pasta, and the oyster special.” He turned to Maggie. “What’ll you have, love?”

  She couldn’t stop her eyes from popping. “None of that was for me?”

  He leaned over and whispered, grinning lasciviously. “I did warn you about selkie appetites.”

  She tried to ignore the luscious ripple of sexual promise that wobbled through her core.

  A short time later, Maggie was polishing off her lunch-sized portion of fish and chips, watching as her strange companion swallowed back the last oyster with gusto. He’d eaten all of it, every last morsel, although he’d tried to share a great deal of it with her. And he’d ordered two more bottles of red wine, too. She’d had a glass. He’d had the rest. And he was as sober as a novice on her first day at the convent.

  “Do you always eat like this?”

  Calan laughed. “I’ll share something with you. Selkie folk are sensualists. We live to feel, Maggie. We live to touch, to smell, to taste.” He leaned over and gave her a kiss so redolent of buttered shrimp that she almost thought she was at Red Lobster. “And we like to eat, mostly shellfish, but I’d take a good burger any day.”

  She couldn’t help laughing at his enthusiasm. It was as infectious as his kisses.

  “And,” he continued, “I do have a weakness for fine red wines. And one of the perks of being selkie is that it takes a lot to get me drunk.”

  “So, when you lost your skin to Gran, you must have had a lot.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Not one of my better moments. That Gran of yours must have been serving me firewater.” And then he smiled at her. An honest-to-goodness, genuine

  smile that reached right into her core and snagged her heart. “But I don’t regret it for a second.”

  They gazed at each other for a few moments, lost in the heat of their all-too-apparent feelings, until Maggie heard a ruckus near their booth. She looked up, only to find a teary-eyed woman standing before their table.

  Calan paled and whispered. “Oh, fuck.”

  “Calan Kirk,” the woman blubbered. “I make a point of coming to a different pub, and still I find you here! With your tart. How could you do this to me?”

  Maggie’s eyes widened as she took in the other woman. She was stunning, in a made-up way, with streaked hair and eyes lined in heavy black liner. And she had amazing knockers, ones she didn’t mind putting on display. Feeling somehow inadequate, even though she knew she was no slouch in the boob department, Maggie crossed her arms over her chest.

  So this was how it would play out. Calan Kirk wasn’t a selkie at all. In actuality, he appeared to be a straying, very human husband with a frantic wife, and likely eleven kids at home. He was using her to get his kicks, while this poor woman waited for him to return.

  Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, and I’ll pop the bastard if he tries to touch me again.

  “Annette,” he warned, his voice low and rumbly. “We’ve spoken about this, pet.”

  “Don’t call me your pet,” she cried, pointing at Maggie. “Not while you sit here with your slag!”

  “Tart and a slag? I’m outta here.” Maggie blinked, gawked at Calan, and then tried to exit the booth.

  His hand was on her arm like a heavy weight, preventing her from leaving. “Maggie. Don’t.”

  “Let the little slut go,” Annette growled. “I made you happier than she does. I know it!”

  “This is too much,” Maggie whispered, shaking her head. Once again, she tried to scootch out of the booth but Calan held her fast. Dammit! Did he have to be so freaking strong? “Let me go.”

  His nostrils flared. “I will not. You have the wrong idea. I’m not with her.”

  Annette laughed, a shrill titter from a clearly frantic woman. “You were certainly with me every time I had my mouth on your nugget!”

  Nugget? Maggie knew the woman meant it as an insult, but as a description, it was probably the most inadequate she’d ever heard.

  Calan looked as if he wanted the sea to swallow him up. And as much as Maggie wanted to run out of the pub, throw up, and curse her luck with men, she was also strangely captivated by the scene before her. The woman, Annette, looked almost crazed, hypnotized. Haunted, even. Maybe she and Calan didn’t have a relationship now, but it was obvious they’d had something sometime. And she was having trouble getting over it.

  Sure, he seemed to have a magical sway over women, but this was just insane.

  “Annette,” he said, trying to be calm. “You know as well as I that I broke up with you. And that I haven’t touched you in months.” He turned to Maggie, his eyes earnest. “You have to believe that. Since my first dream of you, since Nora told me about you, I’ve not touched another woman.”

  “It’s okay,” she replied, trying to force a measure of calm into her voice. “You don’t owe me any explanations. I have no ties to you.”

  He almost looked tired
. “Don’t you?”

  Even though Annette was still blabbering to herself about being wronged, Maggie felt lost in Calan’s eyes. Lost in the sense of being totally alone with him, even though they were in a busy pub. She heard the rush of the sea and the pound of the surf in her head, and somehow felt swept away by the feeling that she actually meant something to him.

  Heaven help her, she believed him. She totally believed he’d finished with Annette before she’d arrived on the scene.

  But Annette interrupted their interlude with her rambling. She put her hand on Maggie’s and yanked hard to get her attention. Calan’s hand was immediately on Annette’s, a gentle but unmovable force, letting her know that she should in no way touch Maggie.

  Annette recoiled, as if slapped across the face. She turned to Maggie, despondent, and Maggie almost felt sorry for her.

  “I’ll make you regret this,” Annette sobbed. “I’ll make you both regret this.” With that, she ran out of the pub.

  Calan turned to her, mortified. “I’m sorry. It’s the selkie in me, Maggie. She doesn’t understand why she wants me that way, she just does. When a love affair ends, it can be hard for some human women to let go of a selkie man.”

  And she could only stare back, speechless. Would it be that hard for her when he finally decided to leg it? Would she also become a fragile shell of a woman, clinging to lost dreams and remembered touches?

  It was terrifying to consider.

  * * * *

  Half an hour later, they were still sitting in the booth, virtually silent. Neither of them had said more than two words since Annette’s blubbery departure, and Maggie didn’t know what to say. Luckily, the music in the pub was loud. She could sit there under the pretense of listening, even though her mind was spinning. Calan ordered another bottle of wine, and this time, she polished off two quick glasses herself.

  As she downed her last drop, Calan lifted the wine glass out of her hand and placed it at the far end of the table. “Talk to me.”

  “I don’t feel like talking,” she said, hating that she sounded like a five-year-old, pouting child.

  He looked to be at the end of his rope. “Well, say something, dammit. Anything. Tell me about your hopes. Your dreams.”

  “Yeah, right. You claim to know everything about me anyway.”

  His face was set in solemn lines. “I do know about you.”

  She sniffed. “Calan, let’s be honest. You really don’t know a thing about me.”

  He bristled. “Really? I wasn’t lying, Maggie, when I said I was dreaming about you. Selkie dreams are different. We see things. I’ve seen you. I’ve seen your whole life flash in front of me. Your feelings. Your motivations.”

  She leaned back against the booth, crossing her arms. “Right. Any of which could have been learned on Google and LinkedIn.”

  His eyes flashed as he met her challenge. “I’m not talking about the things on your résumé. I’m talking about the secret details no one would know about you. Like the fact you took Spanish night school classes for years, but only retained the swear words. Or that when you read a romance novel, you skim it, looking for the filthy parts. You might want to give up that book club you’re in. Those other women are too prudish to read the books you devour in private.”

  Her body exploded in embarrassed heat.

  “Oh, and you might want to relinquish your slightly unreasonable crush on Ewan McGregor. He’s not coming for you anytime soon. Just as you had to give up your high school campaign to have the piccolo included in the school rock band. You might like the piccolo, Maggie, but no one else does.”

  Her jaw dropped. “I don’t under…”

  “I’m not done yet,” he said gently, silencing her with an intimate, little smile. “You had to take your driving test five times before you finally got your license because the examiners made you so nervous. You never told anyone about that, aside from your mum and dad.” He paused. “They were very important to you, and you miss them a great deal.”

  She nodded, unable to speak.

  “They had a whirlwind romance that only got stronger with time. Your dad came to Orkney as a young backpacker and met your mother. They fell madly in love and she left with him, choosing to live a world away in Toronto, rather than not be with him.” He paused. “How am I doing, Maggie?”

  She could only look away, stunned. He’d detailed all the secret quirks that made her who she was. Now all she needed to be truly stupefied was to have him recount the shameful history between her and her former boyfriends. She noticed he’d left out that topic, and she had a feeling he’d done it on purpose.

  “Oh, I know everything about them, too,” he said, reading her mind. “I just wasn’t willing to waste my breath on them.” Once again, he ignored what had to be the stupefied expression on her face and nodded toward the band. “Listen. They just started one of my favorite ballads.”

  Maggie watched in surprise as Calan stood and went to join the band, as if they were expecting him. He listened to the melodic sound as the fiddle sang out the introduction. And then, to her immense surprise, he began to sing.

  Maggie’s heart jumped into her throat. She already knew Calan had a deep, rich voice, but his singing voice was unlike anything she’d ever heard. And everyone in the bar seemed to agree because everything came to a screeching halt on his first note. Every eye was riveted to him and for good reason. His voice was the call of a siren. Profound. Penetrating. Haunting. It glided over every note with ease and was so resonant it seemed to possess its own echo. It bounced off the walls of that little pub and straight into Maggie’s heart.

  His voice was perfect for the song, a lilting ballad that told of lost love and the sea. It was a story of a young woman who, after her sailor husband drowned in the ocean, threw herself into its stormy waves. When Calan sang of lovers being reunited in the murky depths, Maggie felt he was singing only for her.

  When the song ended, no one moved, not even to clap. Even the band members were frozen with admiration to their spots. Waitresses, cooks, patrons were all still, as if caught in a trance. Calan stared at Maggie, seemingly just as rapt, but for other reasons. And

  then he bounded back to their booth, and everyone in the pub went back to what they were previously doing.

  As if he’d never sung at all.

  He sat and took Maggie’s hand, grinning. The look on his face said, “See? Told you so.” And then he kissed her before she could argue. He slid his warm tongue into her open mouth and dug his hands into her hair, as if they weren’t meant to be anywhere but on her body.

  Immediately, she was on fire for him, all worries about Annette and her make-believe eleven children out the window. When he finally released her, she stared up at him in wonderment. “How did you sing like that?”

  He nibbled her earlobe, gently sucking, and then whispered conspiratorially. “I may be selkie, but I’ve always suspected we had some siren in our blood.”

  Right there in the confines of their booth, Calan pulled her onto his lap and made her straddle him. Maggie clung to him, not caring that they were in a crowded pub. She let him kiss the length of her neck and reveled in the feel of his tongue on her skin. She wanted that feeling everywhere, wanted him to lick her everywhere. And while he kissed her, she felt his hand dip down between their bodies, caressing her pussy through her jeans. She bucked atop him, as if given an electric shock.

  “Oh God, Calan,” she said, her heart giving voice to the thoughts scorching her brain. “I need you now.”

  There was a deep, needy noise rumbling in his chest. “Then you’ll have me.”

  She watched as he looked up toward the pub door and squeezed his eyes shut, as if concentrating. All of a sudden, one by one, everyone in the pub vacated without a word. Ladies grabbed their purses and walked out with the men in tow. Even the staff members left. It was as if an air raid siren had sounded and the place was being calmly evacuated.

  “What’s going on?” she had enough sense
to mumble. “Another Jedi mind trick?”

  He opened his eyes as the last person left and closed the door. And then he took her mouth in a savage kiss that ended only when they both ran out of breath. “Why, sweet Maggie. I’m just giving you what you want.” His gaze dipped down to her collar. “Now if you’d just lie back on this table so I can undress you, I’d be much obliged.”

  Maggie’s mouth opened and closed a few times, and she worried she very much resembled a cod caught in a fisherman’s net. Even still, she lay back on the booth table. “But what if everyone comes back?”

  Who was she kidding? They weren’t coming back.

  Calan undid the snap on her jeans and slowly lowered her zipper, pausing to nip at the exposed skin of her abdomen. “They’re gone for the night. Trust me.”

  “But how do you know?” she asked, her brain still reeling.

  He looked up, the merest hint of impatience in his eyes. “Maggie, you might not believe I’m selkie, but would you at least concede that I possess … certain abilities?”

  She gulped as his fingers skimmed under her shirt, setting her skin ablaze. Oh, he possessed certain abilities, all right. “But how does it work?”

  “Let’s just say the song of a selkie leaves humans in somewhat of pliable frame of mind. Open to suggestion. All I did was make a mental suggestion.”

  “Oh,” she said, at a loss for words. “And did you use the same trick on me?”

  He grinned the sexy grin of a devil, one who was quite fulfilled in his evil line of work. “Do I need to? Do you need persuading?”

  Her breath caught. “No.”

  He licked his lips. “Then let’s get your clothes off, Maggie. I’m tired of waiting. I need to be inside you again.”

  She gulped, all her common sense dissipating like a fine mist. She was tired of waiting too. And she definitely needed Calan inside her.

  The door to the pub crashed open. Even as they looked up toward the intruder, Calan was doing up her jeans again, making her look more respectable than she felt. She slid off the table and stared.