Under His Skin

by Jennifer Blackstream

  Get a grip, Brec.

  Kissing her had been a result of his weakness. She’d poked him, mocked him. Flashing her body at him like that—taunting him by insinuating that the startled look on his face was the result of some naiveté about the fairer sex. As if somehow he was a boy—ignorant of the pleasures of the flesh and flustered by the sight of a beautiful woman without the barrier of her clothing. In that moment, he’d known she considered herself a sophisticated temptress, capable of using the naïve selkie’s desires to muddle his mind and bend him to her will.

  It all went back to his reputation as a healer. People used words like “gentle,” “kind,” and even “wise.” They were words to bring comfort to the sick and injured, but not words to entice potential mates. Not in a world of half-animal existence where despite all the modern conveniences a passing killer whale could still bring a bloody visceral end to one’s existence. Females wanted “strong,” “alpha,” and “powerful.”

  He’d had to show her how wrong she was. Had to close the distance between them and show her with the press of his mouth, the erotic coaxing of his tongue, that he was no stranger to the pleasures of the flesh. He wanted her to know that if she engaged in a war of sexual seduction, she would be facing an enemy more than capable of meeting her on her level. If he’d been a different type of man, he could have taken her wet naked body in his arms and pressed her against the steamy wall of the shower. He could have dipped his fingers inside her body and twisted her nerves with pleasure until she writhed against him, begging for—

  “Don’t follow that train of thought,” Brec said aloud. He shook himself as if he could physically rid his mind of the erotic images that threatened his tenuous control over his libido. He took a deep breath and turned his attention to Ana’s room. As long as she was in the shower, he might as well take the opportunity to search her bedroom.

  Unlike the rest of her house, Ana’s bedroom wasn’t decorated with expensive paintings and sculpture. Quite the contrary, it was almost barren. From his position standing in front of the bathroom door, Brec saw her bed directly in front of him, between the bathroom and a window overlooking the sea. To his right, against the far wall, there was a small black dresser with a shelf above it. Against the wall beside the bathroom door there was one more dresser, with the same sleek black finish as the first. A tall mirror stood directly opposite him on the wall beside the dresser.

  Brec strode over to the first dresser under the bookshelf. A pot of red geraniums sat on the far right corner, filling the air with their sweet apple scent. Leaning against the pot was a small poppet. A different scent mingled with the fragrance of the geraniums and Brec picked up the poppet to see if that was where the scent was coming from.

  “Eucalyptus,” he murmured. He raised an eyebrow. Poppets stuffed with eucalyptus were used for healing rituals. He eyed the geraniums again. Geraniums were also used for a variety of healing purposes.

  Turning a new eye to the room, he noticed another pot of flowers sitting on the other dresser. Hyacinths. He used hyacinths for his patients who suffered from nightmares due to fevers.

  “What is she up to?” Brec said softly to himself. His mind traveled back to the circle of herbs on the lower level. “What are you doing, Ana?”

  “Still think she’s a ‘lousy person?’”

  Nu’s voice drew Brec’s attention up to where the little pixie sat perched on the books lining the shelf. The fey canted his head to the side as if waiting for Brec’s response.

  “If I didn’t know any better,” Brec said slowly. “I would say Ana is a healer of some sort.”

  Nu frowned. “But?”

  “But, no healer would ever steal a skinwalker’s skin,” he finished firmly. The emotions he had toward Ana, hostility, frustration, and a sharp edge of attraction soured every possible explanation that came to his mind. For all the times he’d cursed the stereotypes that surrounded healers, he knew at least one aspect of that reputation was true. “The amount of pain losing a skin causes a skinwalker is too great for a true healer to ever excuse.” He gestured at the plants. “I don’t know what she’s doing here, but she’s no healer.”

  “So she just has peculiar reading tastes?”

  Brec frowned and raised his gaze to the line of books on the small shelf. Disbelief parted his lips as he read the titles.

  “These are all healing texts,” he murmured. “Some of them are rare.” He pointed to one of the more ragged volumes. “I thought this one had been lost decades ago.” He ran a finger over the titles, moving slowly and caressing each one like the gift it was. “These first ones are all dedicated to burns.”

  A strangled gasp from behind him jerked his attention away from the books. He turned to find Ana standing in the doorway to the bathroom, staring at him as if she’d just caught him pissing in her planter. Before he could ask her what she was looking so outraged about, the look vanished from her face and she stomped over to the dresser opposite him.

  “Some of those texts are old, please don’t touch them.”

  Her voice sounded strained, as if she were upset and fighting not to show it. Brec turned more fully to face her, narrowing his eyes. “There are books here I didn’t think existed anymore. Where did you get them?”

  “Not much of a healer then, if you didn’t care enough to look for them,” she snapped. “They weren’t that hard to find.”

  Anger blossomed in Brec’s chest and he gritted his teeth. “I am the greatest healer the selkie have seen in over three centuries.”

  “I’ll bet your mom is so proud.”

  Brec’s eyes widened and he sucked in a breath to retaliate. The breath caught in his throat as Ana dropped her towel. The smooth pale curve of her back and the pertness of her softly rounded ass dragged his gaze down her body and sent all of his blood raging south. He couldn’t help but notice that Ana was taller than Katie. Her body would probably fit perfectly with his, her spine curving back against his chest as he wrapped his arms around her to cup her breasts in his hands . . .

  A flash of bright red edged with black lace caught his eye. As Ana stepped into a pair of the sexiest lingerie Brec had ever seen, a wave of scorn colored his arousal. He sneered.

  “Still trying to seduce me? I thought we already—”

  A cry halfway between anger and frustration clawed its way out of Ana’s throat. She grabbed hold of the drawer’s handle and ripped it out of the dresser. Brec stared in shock as a plethora of silk and lace undergarments spilled over the floor in a tidal wave of unmentionables.

  “This is what I wear, you arrogant prick,” Ana seethed. “Tell me, if I went commando would that better, or would that be an even bigger sign that I’m trying to seduce you?”

  Staring at the floor, littered with a rainbow of underwear and bras, Brec felt as though he’d slipped into an alternate reality. Yesterday, he’d been a selkie healer—respected by his people and consumed with the desire to shed his healer persona and become a warrior like his brother. Now all of a sudden, he had his chance to take on what he perceived to be a great evil. A woman who stole skins was as high up on the enemy chain as one could get. And yet here he was, in the thick of the battle, and he was standing in a pile of lady’s undergarments facing off against a naked woman still stinging from her failed seduction attempt. It was too much.

  Laughter bubbled up his throat and poured out his mouth before he could stop it. He laughed, covering his face with bemused shame. This isn’t funny he told himself firmly. The laughter didn’t stop. It was just too ridiculous, too silly. Oh, what would Micah say when he told him this story? His brother finally got to play warrior—and ended up staring at a pile of panties.

  He lowered his hand to find Ana staring at him like he’d lost his mind. He didn’t even try to explain, couldn’t think of a way to even begin. Slowly, one corner of her mouth twitched upward. To Brec’s further amusement, she began to chuckle.

  “I suppose after seeing me naked, getting a peek at my underwear
is somewhat anti-climatic,” she admitted, trying to stifle a giggle.

  “Well, the fact that I’m seeing it en masse does add to the effect, if that makes you feel any better,” Brec offered, still chuckling.

  “Well that’s something,” she joked.

  For a second they both just stood there, neither of them seeming to know what to say. A weight seemed to have lifted from his shoulders and Brec found himself staring at Ana with new eyes.

  Who are you? he wondered. He’d arrived here in such a rage over his stolen skin, he hadn’t really taken the time to find out anything about the woman who’d stolen it. Then after he’d discovered she’d played him for a fool, he’d been angrier still. That sort of emotion weighed on Brec’s soul. It seemed anger grew heavier the longer he carried it.

  Now that he’d seen her circle, noticed her herbs, and discovered her texts, new emotions were starting to break through. A new side of Ana was showing, just a hint of a better person here and there. Brec frowned, struggling to process everything swirling around his head. Where was the truth? Who was Ana, really? A thief who ruined lives with her crimes? Or a woman immersed in the healing arts?

  “You’re looking at me so strangely,” Ana said softly. She bent down and picked up a bra, slipping it on without making a show of it. “What are you thinking?”

  She’s not trying to seduce me. That has to be a step in the right direction.

  “Just that I don’t really know you.” Brec shook his head, agitated by an overwhelming sense of confusion and helplessness. Real warriors didn’t go through this, he was sure of that. Real warriors identified the enemy and then did whatever it took to overcome that enemy. He should be using whatever means necessary to get the information he needed from Ana, not standing here wondering why the skin-thief had healing herbs all over her house.

  “What do you want to know?”

  Hope flared inside him as he met Ana’s eyes. If he could just get to know her a little more—if he could just understand her. There had to be a way for him to reach her and make her realize that returning the skins was the right thing to do.

  “Why did you take those skins?” he breathed.

  Her face fell and she turned away from him to retrieve a pair of jeans from another drawer. She didn’t look at him as she pulled the pale blue denim over her long legs. “So you don’t really want to know about me, you just want to know about the skins?”

  Brec’s face flushed and he mentally kicked himself. She’d finally been about to open up and instead of easing into the conversation he’d gone right for the bull’s-eye. Rookie mistake.

  “You’re right, I’m sorry,” he said honestly. He shrugged. “I guess I can have sort of a one-track mind.”

  Ana nodded toward the floor as she pulled on a red sweater. “Yeah, I know.”

  Brec cursed himself as he felt the familiar burn of a blush on his cheeks. The fact that his gaze kept drifting over Ana’s sweater and the way it hugged her breasts didn’t help. He started to kneel down on the floor and then froze.

  “Is the gentlemanly thing to do still to help pick things up when those things happen to be a lady’s panties?”

  Ana chuckled and knelt down. “I’ll get them.”

  Even a warrior would be a little thrown by a pile of women’s underwear, Brec assured himself. He straightened and tried to distract himself from his growing discomfort.

  “You seem awfully preoccupied with whether or not you’re being a gentleman.”

  His eyebrows furrowed in confusion as she looked down at Ana. She was gathering her panties into a pile, but thankfully the blush on his face didn’t seem to worsen. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, one minute you’re acting all gruff and tough and then the next you’re being all polite and understanding.” She scooped up her pile and dumped it into the drawer, still lying on the floor. “When you first showed up, you brandished that knife of yours like you were going to skin me alive. Then a few tears later and you were ready to just let me go and walk away.”

  Brec scowled, remembering how easily she’d duped him. Anger fed the flames of his chagrin and he glared at her. “Awfully bold to bring that up, isn’t it?”

  Ana raised her gaze to his face. “If you were going to hurt me, you’d have done it already.”

  “My lack of violence seems to be quite a weakness,” he muttered, his mind churning with a sudden desire for her to fear him. He stared at her, trying to muster the nerve to do something to wipe that confidence from her face. He was her captor, she should have some fear of him. How was he supposed to make her tell him where those skins were if she saw no threat in him?

  “A lack of violence is not a weakness in a healer,” Ana corrected him, her focus redirected to putting her drawer back into the dresser. “You’re supposed to heal people not hurt them.”

  “People seem to respect warriors more than healers,” Brec muttered bitterly.

  “Only stupid people.”

  That last comment halted his anger, made him raise his eyebrows in surprise. He stared at Ana, canting his head to the side in sudden curiosity. “What do you mean by that?”

  Ana shrugged, shutting the drawer and making sure it was properly aligned. “Any idiot with a stick can hurt someone. It takes a fuck of a lot more skill to fix a wound than to inflict it.”

  Brec stifled a growl of frustration as he fell back into the other dresser, leaning his weight on it as he regarded the puzzling female in front of him. He wanted to paint her as a bad person so badly. It infuriated him that the more she talked, the more he started to . . . not hate her.

  She steals skins. She’s evil.

  She has healing herbs and texts all over the place. She must help people somehow, she can’t be evil.

  She humiliated you, played you for a fool.

  But she respects your profession like no one else, values it over the skills of a warrior. She’s the woman you’ve been looking for.

  That last thought lit a fuse inside him and suddenly his body exploded into motion. Ana gasped as he shot across the room and grabbed her by the shoulders, throwing them both back into the dresser until she was trapped between the hard wood of the drawers and the solid line of his body.

  “Dammit, woman, you need to come clean with me,” he growled. “You are either a bad person or a good person, you can’t be both.”

  Ana’s eyes widened and a small part of him reveled at the crack in her confident façade. Finally there were no games in her eyes, no lies in her face. She stared at him with blatant surprise, her body tense with confusion.

  “I thought you said I was a bad person, no question about it,” she whispered. “I stole those skins. How can I be a good person after that?”

  Something about her voice made him think that question held a deeper meaning. He stared into her eyes, searching for signs of manipulation, but he found none. A vulnerable tone had crept into her voice. It was as if she wanted him to convince her that she wasn’t a bad person.

  The world seemed to tilt madly around him. Maybe if he could convince her that she was really a good person, he could make her do the right thing. Hope flared inside him and his hands tightened on her shoulders. He could reason with her, make her see what had to be done. But how could he convince her that she was a good person when he wasn’t sure he believed it himself?

  “There was a nail file on the counter in the bathroom,” he said suddenly. “If you were a bad person, you could have jammed it in my eye when you came out. You could have—”

  “That’s disgusting,” Ana interrupted, her face looking a little green.

  A smile tugged at the corner of Brec’s mouth, her obvious distaste for violence pushing his hopes higher. “A bad person wouldn’t let that deter them. If you were a bad person, you would have blinded me and been gone with the wind by the time I recovered enough to follow you.”

  “Well now you tell me,” she grumbled, still looking nauseated.

  Brec stared into her eyes, trying to
impress the severity of the situation on her. “Ana, please,” he pleaded. “You want to know how you can know if you’re a good person? Just tell me where the skins are. There are people out there who are in a lot of pain because of what you took from them. I know what that pain feels like—I’ve experienced it firsthand.” Was that a wince of guilt he saw flicker across her face? “You don’t know what it’s like because you’re a human,” he pressed. “But for a skinwalker, being stuck in human form with no ability to change is just . . . it’s the worst feeling in the world. Our animal forms are what make us who we are. It’s what makes us feel whole. To lose that is just . . .”