Read Online Skies of Steel: The Ether Chronicles by Zoe Archer - Free Book Online Page A

night and being able to see as clearly as if it were high noon.
    A very useful skill when navigating the night skies, a pitch-black treasure house, or a woman’s bedroom in the smoky, seductive hours before dawn.
    “Come with me,” he said to Miss Carlisle. It was a measure of how shaken she’d been by what they’d just endured that she gave him no argument, no quick retort.
    Instead, feeling her way carefully, she followed him. They walked down the companionway. Once they were below decks, however, the darkness was thick as secrets, and the night vision she acquired topside seemed to fail her in the black corridors. She shuffled along, and he heard the slide of her hand along the bulkheads lining the passageways.
    She started when he took her hand in his.
    “Easy,” he muttered. “Just some guidance.”
    “Yes,” she said. Then, with more strength, “Yes, that’s fine.”
    Hand in hand, they continued down the passageway. Hers seemed tiny and cool in comparison to his, but it surprised him to feel small calluses on her palms and lightly edging her fingers. More surprising were the embers of awareness traveling from her hand to his, and up through his body. He’d been intrigued by her as a woman since the first moment he’d seen her, yet this went beyond his usual fast, simple want of a female’s bodily pleasures. In their shared touch, as he led her through the passageway, he had knowledge of her—the unexpected resilience in her hand, how that same fortitude moved through her, and the surprising amount of desire it stirred within him.
    All from holding a woman’s hand. By God, had it been so long for him that this tiny touch affected him so strongly? He could barely remember the Portuguese courtesan he’d visited weeks ago, all the artful skills she’d employed as distant and uninvolving as if that night had happened to someone else.
    Miss Carlisle’s breathing, which had calmed somewhat, grew shallow again. Tension in her hand, as if she was torn between gripping him harder, or pulling away.
    The same warring impulses he felt.
    He stopped in front of one particular door, glancing back at her. Her eyes were opened wide.
    “We’re here.” He pushed open the door and led her inside. To her eyes, the room would be filled with ashy light and silhouettes of furniture, but she wouldn’t be able to guess where exactly he’d taken her.
    When he released her hand, her fingers briefly curled, like she wanted to keep hold of him. Then they straightened, letting him go.
    He moved through the chamber, closing heavy shutters. All the windows and portholes were covered, as well, throwing the chamber into a darkness as thick as it had been in the passageway.
    Wryly, she asked, “Have you taken me to the brig?”
    “This’d be a damn plush brig. Cover your eyes.” With all the windows and portholes secured, he lit a quartz lamp, keeping it at its lowest setting. Dim green light glowed.
    Slowly, she took her hand away from her eyes, blinking in the light. She turned in a slow circle. He watched her gaze flick around the room, alighting here and there. Bookcase. Chest. Desk. Bed—built to his specifications.
    “This is your stateroom.” She looked again at the bed. It certainly could hold two people comfortably, even if one was his size.
    He didn’t consider himself a particularly imaginative man, but he had no trouble conjuring images of her splayed out there, white sheets rumpled around her slim curves.
    Difficult to read the look on her face as she glanced from the bed to him.
    “If you haven’t brought me here for a drink,” she said, “I’m leaving.”
    He strode to a low cabinet and unlatched it. Cold air wafted out. He grabbed a bottle and two small glasses, and held them up. “This is more than a drink. It’s the essence of Russia.”
    “Vodka.”
    He set the glasses down on the table, and filled them to their rims. “My country may have turned its back on me, but I can’t change my Russian