Read Online Moonstruck by Susan Grant - Free Book Online

slapped her knuckles to her forehead in a sloppy salute.
    Finn rolled his eyes. “Get out of here, Pehzwan. Load the rest of your gear.” He shoved the skin back into her hands. Her fingernails were dirty, he noticed. Bandar probably had, too. He thought he’d told Rakkelle and the others to clean up before coming aboard. Then he remembered that she’d been helping unload cargo. Well, she’d have a chance to wash soon enough. There were washrooms aplenty on this ship, some even in a crewman’s own quarters. He knew his would have one. Utter luxury. He made a mental note to check their hands before the upcoming meal.
    Rakkelle swaggered off, swaying her ass for the entertainment of the men in the crew as she draped her sleeping skin over her shoulder.
    “She’s an imp,” Bandar observed. To his surprise, she sounded amused, but not in the bitter way she was with him.
    “Aye, she is that.”
    “A little imp who’ll be flying my ship. And she needs a bath.”
    “I’ll make sure she gets one—all of them.” He wanted to prove they weren’t barbarians. Though all he’d been thinking about all afternoon was holding Stone-Heart’s sexy ass in his hands and acting anything but civilized.
    She pressed a finger alongside the bottom of her nose. “The stench of those…skins is intolerable. Dispose of them.”
    He’d known the smell most of his life. He had to work hard to notice it. “Skins are a space-faring tradition. It’s what every Imperial sailor knows.”
    “They’ll sleep in beds, Warleader. Like soldiers, not pirates.”
    Rorkken almost fought her on that, convincing her that they had rights based on the Triad, that she couldn’t convert them to Triad overnight. But he backed off. There would be other battles. A lifetime of fighting had taught him the bigger ones were better worth the fight.
    Not to mention that he needed this gig. His crew needed this gig. If it meant painting their toenails pink to keep it, he’d freepin’ consider it. The prospect of full bellies offset the small amount of ego lost in any concessions required to stay in Bandar’s good graces long enough to launch this ship—with all of them aboard.
    “I’ll see that the skins are removed from the Unity, ” he said.
    “Now, let us continue to the bridge, Warleader.”
    “Give me a moment with the crew, please, Admiral.”
    Bandar answered with a nod and continued down the corridor, trailed by her loyal lieutenant. “See that my shipboard quarters are set up,” he heard her tell Keyren. “We won’t be sleeping on the Ring tonight. All hands will sleep on board tonight, and until we launch.”
    Zurykk sidled up to him and murmured in his ear, “Don’t expect me to start following you like that, Captain.”
    Finn laughed. The man would die for him. That was all he needed to know. “She doesn’t want the skins aboard,” he said when the admiral was out of earshot.
    The crew met the news with grumbles. Finn’s hand went to his sidearm—new, Triad issued. “Enough. We are on this ship by the goodwill of the gods. Don’t push your luck. We sleep in bunks like they do.”
    “Why do we have to be the ones to give in?” his apprentice engineer Simi asked.
    “Because we lost the war, fool,” Zurykk grumbled.
    Bolivarr spoke up. “It’s more than that. If we want to stay here, we have to adapt to their rules.”
    He gets it, Finn realized with pleasure. Then again, sharp perception and willingness added weight to Bolivarr’s claim that he’d been an Imperial Wraith before they’d found him unconscious and bleeding in a back alley with no memory of how he got there, thanks to several years’ gap in his memory. The former elite commando was now a hitchhiker dependent on a captain’s mercy. Bolivarr might understand Finn’s reasoning for wanting to play along with Bandar’s demands, but the admiral? If she was disturbed about Rakkelle, wait until she found out about Battle-Lieutenant Bolivarr.
    “Besides, we’re