Read Under His Skin for Free Online

expression on his seal countenance, his heart nearly stopped beating. He pointed to himself and then up toward the shops and the seal vanished under the waves again.
     
    “Think, Brec, think,” Brec said out loud, the panic in his voice making the adrenaline spill even faster into his veins. He trudged through the snow, up the path toward the main street. “Where is it?”
     
    “If you’ve been around here long at all, you’ve heard the stories. Devastatingly handsome men coming out of the water, shedding their seal furs so that they can take a human lover?”
     
    He stopped so suddenly it was a miracle he didn’t fall over. Ana’s face hovered in his mind, her words echoing in his ears. At the time, he’d thought she was just flirting, using what she thought was a myth to flatter him. In light of his missing skin, her words didn’t sound so innocent anymore. Anger burned up his spine like the fuse of a stick of dynamite. As a matter of fact, her abrupt departure seemed more sinister now too.
     
    The handshake. Brec cursed himself and stared down at the webbing between his fingers. He never thought about it, never even really noticed it. He spent most of his time with other selkies and to them it was just skin, nothing to draw the eye. Clearly, it had drawn Ana’s. And it had told her everything she needed to know about him.
     
    His anger sped his pace as he trudged through the snow back to Mrs. Downing’s shop. The way Ana talked about her, it seemed she’d been there more than once, maybe the nosey herbalist would know where she lived.
     
    As he trekked through the snow in the human body that was seeming more and more clumsy now that it was his only option, Brec tried figure out exactly why Ana had stolen his skin. Could she possibly believe the old stories? Did she think that stealing his skin would make him stay and be her husband?
     
    Part of his body perked up at the idea of taking Ana as his wife, but it had no effect whatsoever on the heat of his anger. If anything his physical attraction to her only pissed him off more. Beautiful or not, taking his skin had been a mistake. He would not end up like the selkies in the old tales, settling down and having children with the human who stole his skin—spending every day of his life searching for the fur that would let him return to the sea. He clenched his teeth. He may only have a human male’s strength, but she was a human female. He’d make her give him his skin back.
     
    The bells over the door of Mrs. Downing’s shop clanged in his ears, their noise only agitating him even further. He took a breath to yell for Mrs. Downing, but she appeared before a word could leave his lips. Her eyebrows rose and he wondered how much of his fury was showing on his face. Choking back his anger, he twisted his lips into what he hoped was a smile.
     
    “Mrs. Downing, I need your help.”
     
    All traces of suspicion vanished from her face. “My help? Why certainly. Anything for my best customer.”
     
    “It’s about Ana, the woman I was talking with here earlier.”
     
    “Ah, yes, she is a beauty, isn’t she? And a nice girl too, comes in here at least once a week for her herbs. She must be a healer like you, as varied as her stock is.” She paused. “You two have a lot in common.”
     
    The knowing look on the old woman’s face set Brec’s blood to boiling. If only the herbalist knew what his true intentions were for Ana, she’d run screaming in the other direction.
     
    “Yes, we do.” His voice sounded strained even to his own ears. He cleared his throat. “I’d like to,” he groped for the words, “call on her. Do you happen to know where she lives?”
     
    “‘Call on her?’ Such a gentlemanly way of speaking.”
     
    She fairly giggled and Brec clenched his hands into fists, trying to keep his temper long enough to get the information he needed. If there was one thing he should know after all these years, it was that you could not