Lord of the Deep Read Online Free PDF Page B

scent of the Lord of the Deep.
    “Bathing naked in the sea?” Adelia scorned. “What can you be thinking, exposing your body in such a way for others to view?”
    “I was hot, and I couldn’t sleep,” Meg said sweetly. “And there was no one to see.”
    “Um,” Adelia growled. “And what of the scrying pool, eh?” she said. “You know the shamans gaze into it at dawn and dusk. Suppose one of the elders—”
    “I hardly think they do so seeking me, Aunt Adelia,” Meg said.
    “You forget. Your initiation is soon. The summer solstice is nearly upon us, and you are not nearly ready to take your place among the priestesses. The shamans will be watching, have no doubts of it, niece.”
    Meg didn’t want to think about that, not with the selkie’s ardor still thrumming through her veins and moistening her sex. Would the throbbing never cease? How she longed to clutch her mons area to still the vibrations that threatened to betray her, but she dared not then, in front of her aunt. And there was something else…Would there be no end of splinters of thought nagging just beneath the surface of her consciousness to torment her? He had sent her back! Yes, she had begged him to, but that was before she consented to be his consort. What did it mean? How had she displeased him? Again and again the questions rang in her ears. Had he ruined her just to kick her aside? Was she nothing more than some mindless conquest? The selkies’ insatiable passion for female humans was legend. Had she become just another casualty of the deep? She was loath to believe it, but there she stood, alone and deflowered in the aftermath of sex like no other imaginable, wearing the nightrail the selkie had returned to her neatly folded atop her cloak on the hard-packed sand. It could mean only one thing. He had spoiled her for any other. He had formed her sexual epicenter into the glove to sheath his enormity—custom fitted her to it. No other would suffice now, and he was gone! She was ruined.
    “Why the sour face?” Adelia probed. “You are up to something. Do not think I cannot see it.”
    “I am not liking that I am spied on,” Meg recovered, sulking. “I think I shall pour squid ink in the scrying pool. Let the shamans ogle me through that!”
    Adelia threw back her grizzled head and laughed outright. She smelled of fish and peat and unwashed hair. Meg would not come too near. The foul-smelling woman spoiled Simeon’s scent still rising from the fine lawn night smock underneath her cloak.
    The old woman reached to take Meg’s arm. “Come,” she said. “There is no time for you to change. We are behindhand. Just because your uncle Olwyn is away does not mean the chores must stop. It is time to bait the eel pots. We have a business to run, or had you forgotten? Fie, such a face! I will help you, now come….”
    Meg trudged along beside her aunt. No, she hadn’t fooled her, but she hadn’t betrayed herself either. She’d forgotten about the scrying pool. She would have to be more careful in future. But what future could she hope to have now? She needed to know more about the selkies—much more. Aunt Adeila would know something, certainly more than she. Deciding upon tapping that knowledge, she was glad Adelia had offered her help. It would give her just the opportunity she needed.
    They had reached a small shack behind the cottage, and Adelia lifted the wooden bar and threw it open to the morning mist. A strong fishy smell laced with tar from the nets stored there rushed up Meg’s nostrils. She grimaced. Inside beyond the threshold, the sandy floor was divided by wooden planks into three shallow bins, each housing a selection of horseshoe crabs at different stages of their development. Meg gazed down at the creatures with their horseshoe shaped shells, many legs, and long spinney tail-like appendages. Some were just babies, others just having molted once had been graduated to the middle bin, and then there were the mature ones,