Skies of Steel: The Ether Chronicles by Zoe Archer Page A

how careful he’d been with her. Damn it.
    “I hurt you,” he said, voice rough with self-recrimination. His hands dropped to his sides, and he scowled fiercely.
    “Not a single bruise. It was … I’ve never had a kiss like that.” She backed toward the door. “I must get back to my cabin.”
    “Stay.” His words were rumbled seduction. “It’s good between us. That kiss was just the beginning.”
    A belated drunkenness seemed to hit her. Her legs were unstable, and when she shook her head, she did so wildly. “Have to go.” She stumbled for the door.
    When he appeared beside her, she started. But it was herself she feared, not him.
    “Take this.” He thrust the quartz lamp into her hand. “Don’t want you out there losing your bearings in the dark.”
    She barely managed a thanks before opening the door and lurching into the passageway. With a sense of dreamlike unreality, she navigated her way back to her cabin. Once inside, she sank down onto her cot.
    He’d warned her about going astray, but it was too late.
    I’m already lost.
    M IKHAIL WASN’T SURPRISED that Daphne Carlisle kept herself scarce for the rest of the night and most of the following day. Much as she’d enjoyed the kiss—and participated eagerly—something about it had upset her. Maybe she considered the idea of going to bed with a mercenary distasteful, when she herself seemed to possess such high scruples.
    But, damn, she didn’t kiss him like a high-minded woman.
    He now stood on the forecastle, watching the approaching Egyptian coastline. The ship cruised at half a mile up.
    But he barely saw the shore. His thoughts and body remembered the taste of her, the feel of her. The glittering flame she became when finally allowing herself to burn brightly. His hands tingled, recalling the feel of her slim but soft curves, and his cock stirred with memories of her hips pressed tight to his.
    More than the desire between them, there was a pull stronger than just physical need. She didn’t know the facts of what he’d done to go rogue, though he’d made it clear he deserved censure. No condemnation in her gaze, however. Whatever she thought of him, she spoke to him as though he wasn’t a technologically enhanced soldier of fortune, and she wasn’t a stiff-backed academic. As if they were simply a woman and a man. Equals.
    It had been a long time since he’d enjoyed a woman’s company so much, even out of bed. But if he got her into bed … They’d set the skies to burning, the air thick with smoke from the fire they created between them.
    He gritted his teeth. Later. He’d consider those delicious possibilities later. Right now, the ship was about to make landfall, a critical juncture at this point in the voyage.
    “Fetch Miss Carlisle,” he said to a crewman. “And have her bring her strongbox.”
    The crewman hurried off to obey the order. She appeared a few minutes later, carrying not only the strongbox, but a sharp sense of caution. In the bright light of the eastern Mediterranean sun, she looked more severe, shadows of fatigue ringing her eyes. She hadn’t slept well. Because of him?
    “We cannot be at Medinat al-Kadib yet,” she said without preamble.
    “Half day from here.”
    “Then there’s no need for me to bring this”—she hefted the strongbox—“to you.”
    “There’s every need.” He nodded toward the coastline, and its fringe of palm trees. “We’re nearly in the Shepherdess’s territory. She’s the eyes of this part of the sea. Knows about everyone coming in and going out.”
    Miss Carlisle frowned. “Does she have her own airship?”
    “That’d be impossible, since there are no female Man O’ Wars, and she doesn’t have a rogue one in her employ.” He pointed at a small shape half a mile distant from the ship. “There, and there. Autonomously controlled observation dirigibles.”
    “No one pilots them?”
    “Not a soul. All day and night, they follow prescribed patrol