Skies of Steel: The Ether Chronicles Read Online Free

this job is a mistake.”
    “Good thing we’re old friends, Piotr Romanovich,” Mikhail murmured, “or else I’d throw you into the sea for contradicting your captain.”
    Levkov grumbled something under his breath that Mikhail decided to consider an apology.
    “Besides,” Mikhail continued, “it’s not a mistake when the woman in question will pay us a tsar’s ransom in gold.” Perhaps it wasn’t a tsar’s ransom. More like a tsarevitch’s ransom, but it was still more than Mikhail’s crew had been paid in a long while. Smuggling those contraband tetrol processors into Oceania hadn’t been as profitable as Mikhail had wanted, because the client turned out to have bigger promises than pockets.
    “All the gold in the sodding world won’t matter if we’ve got the navy up our bungholes.”
    “Then we’ll just have to keep our bungholes clean.” His acute hearing caught the sounds of a distant wagon approaching. “She’ll be here in five minutes.”
    Sure enough, five minutes later, a smoke-spewing wagon appeared at the top of the road running past the beach. A boy sat at the wheel, and another young man sat beside him.
    Mikhail frowned. He could’ve sworn that Miss Daphne Carlisle was nearing, as if a strange, other sense had told him that she was nearby. The same sense that had made him aware of her the moment she’d entered the tavern last night. Apparently, that perception had deserted him this morning. But as the wagon bounced nearer, he saw that the young man in the vehicle was Daphne Carlisle. She’d traded her stiff traveling clothes for a short leather jacket and pair of trousers tucked into tall, laced boots. The wagon came to a stop a few yards away, and Miss Carlisle jumped down, revealing just how snug her trousers were, and what an unexpectedly pretty round arse she had.
    “Fuck your sister,” Levkov muttered as she struggled to get her trunk down from the back of the wagon. The boy at the wheel offered no assistance. “The Englishwoman didn’t look like that last night.”
    “I do like surprises,” Mikhail said.
    “No, you don’t.”
    “I like this surprise.” He strode to the wagon and plucked the trunk from the bed of the vehicle, then hoisted it onto his shoulder.
    Miss Carlisle’s moss green eyes widened, and he realized that she didn’t have much experience with Man O’ Wars, to find his strength so surprising. It had taken him nearly a year to get used to it himself.
    Taking the opportunity to see her by daylight, he noted the sharp point of her chin, the fullness of her bottom lip, rose-colored in the morning sun, and the scattering of freckles across her cheeks and nose that were suggestive instead of girlish.
    “I didn’t know captains also offered luggage service,” she said. Last night, she’d worn her light brown hair in a tight bun, but today she’d braided it, and the plait hung down between her shoulder blades. What might it look like if the braid was undone? Would her hair be curly or straight? Coarse or soft?
    He suspected it would be soft, like satin against his fingers.
    “We don’t,” he said. “But I don’t want to watch you fight your baggage for half the day.”
    Saying nothing, she climbed into the bed of the wagon to retrieve her strongbox. It afforded him another fine opportunity to look at her figure. Her curves weren’t generous, but they were definitely there, and she moved with an unexpected energy. But then, he had seen her neatly trip the drunkard accosting her at the tavern, so she possessed some skill. Perhaps she didn’t spend all of her time in dusty university libraries.
    Hefting the strongbox, she caught him staring. He only smiled at her glare.
    Awkward beneath the weight of the metal box, she struggled to alight from the wagon.
    “Happy to alleviate your burden,” he said.
    “Of that, I’ve no doubt.” She grunted with effort as she clambered down. The moment her feet touched the ground, the wagon trundled away, coughing