Книга - Unleashed

Unleashed
CAITLIN CREWS


She’s had fantasies…Now he’s bringing them to life!Notorious seducer Thor Ragnarsson runs the scandalous Hotel Viking in Reykjavik, where tourists go to fulfil their wildest fantasies. When strait-laced American professor Margot Cavendish gets snowed in while studying Icelandic sex culture, Thor challenges her inhibitions with some very hands-on research—soon, she’s exploring every inch of his delicious body. It’s only one night of passion, but when the snowstorm clears they’re left aching for more…







She has fantasies...

Now he’s bringing them to life!

Notorious seducer Thor Ragnarsson runs the scandalous Hotel Viking in Reykjavik, where tourists go to fulfill their wildest fantasies. When straitlaced American professor Margot Cavendish gets snowed in while studying Icelandic sex culture, Thor challenges her inhibitions with some very hands-on research—soon she’s exploring every inch of his delicious body. It’s only one night of passion, but when the snowstorm clears they’re left aching for more...

“DARE is Harlequin’s hottest line yet. Every book should come with a free fan. I dare you to try them!”

—Tiffany Reisz, international bestselling author


USA TODAY bestselling and RITA


Award–nominated author CAITLIN CREWS loves writing romance. She teaches her favourite romance novels in creative writing classes at places like UCLA Extension’s prestigious Writers’ Program, where she finally gets to utilise the MA and PhD in English Literature that she received from the University of York in England. She currently lives in the Pacific Northwest, with her very own hero and too many pets. Visit her at caitlincrews.com (http://caitlincrews.com).


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King’s Price by Jackie Ashenden

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Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk).


Unleashed

Caitlin Crews






www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


ISBN: 978-1-474-07140-6

UNLEASHED

© 2018 Caitlin Crews

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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To Iceland, the most magical place I’ve ever been.


Contents

Cover (#u84602036-8891-51c9-b754-da90052aab47)

Back Cover Text (#ub57d7873-0bb2-52b1-a6d4-728ca1e83005)

About the Author (#ue942c30c-d2bf-57e6-b603-fccc8119dcc0)

Booklist (#u0d674e07-1ab1-582a-a93c-7910495b453b)

Title Page (#u7cab7a4a-772f-56f6-842e-ac7a56f21887)

Copyright (#ud282e21e-9cff-563b-bb95-6303c9d2b258)

Dedication (#ufdd8f283-9303-51a3-b2bc-fd9af1d4d7cc)

CHAPTER ONE (#u2cecd310-4c33-5930-bab4-01cf40d5e831)

CHAPTER TWO (#uf01a728c-3aa1-5584-89a2-d0945261be79)

CHAPTER THREE (#u98e01681-db8f-5e55-8ee3-95cb1299f0f0)

CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

Extract (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)




CHAPTER ONE (#u4b9be9ff-c5ee-53e0-90bd-34e07d12aef4)


“I’M SORRY,” THE overly polite receptionist said from behind the polished surface of the gleaming marble desk in Hotel Viking’s iconic lobby. “The weather has turned foul. There will be no possibility of returning to Reykjavík tonight.”

Professor Margot Cavendish squared her shoulders as if the woman had taken a swing at her, and forced a smile. It wouldn’t do to let her irritation get the better of her, especially when she was mostly—okay, entirely—annoyed with herself.

She’d seen the weather with her very own eyes. She’d known that coming all the way out to this remote village was a risk, especially when there’d been no indication that the man she’d come to see would take a few minutes out of his busy schedule of sin and temptation to meet with her. He hadn’t condescended to answer her emails or bothered to return her calls. And yet she’d gone ahead and come all this way anyway.

This was what she got for being spontaneous, she told herself darkly.

“It was snowing on the way here,” she said, as if she could argue her way back to the little flat she was renting in central Reykjavík during her semester sabbatical. “It was a little slippery, but fine.”

That wasn’t entirely true. The road over the mountains had been treacherous. The snow had been coming down much harder up high than it had been in the city. But her taxi driver had been undeterred. And Margot was used to blustery Midwest winters at the University of Iowa, where she’d taught in the humanities department since completing her doctorate a few years back.

She wasn’t afraid of a little snow. But she’d never spent a winter this close to the arctic, either.

“It’s a developing storm, I’m afraid.” The woman typed ferociously on her keyboard as if she was transmitting that same information to the public as she spoke. The tag on her chest read Freyja. “These winter storms are so unpredictable. It might very well clear up by morning.”

“By morning?”

Margot’s voice was too loud in the hushed, expensive lobby, which made her want to cringe. There was something about this place that got under her skin: its epic pageant of ice and fire on display wherever she went; elves and trolls and sagas wherever she looked, in one form or another. Like this hotel, a monument to sin that its reclusive owner somehow made seem attractive when Margot thought it should all be seedy. She could imagine the sort of things that must go on here, even if she hadn’t seen much of it besides this damned lobby.

She forced her shoulders down an inch from where they’d crept up toward her ears. “You can’t be suggesting I stay here overnight?”

She might or might not have emphasized the word here a bit too much.

The previous owner of the famous Hotel Viking, larger-than-life Daniel St. George, had died in a dramatic car accident in Germany some months before. His will had divided up his boutique hotel properties to the sons it had always been rumored he’d littered about the globe, though he’d never acknowledged them while alive. One of those assets had been Hotel Viking, the remote Icelandic hotel and resort that billed itself as the first and last stop in international fantasy. And it was only a couple of hours outside Reykjavík in good weather, so Margot had decided she had to go see it for herself.

Her current research project was all about Iceland and its reputation as the most feminist country in the world. Specifically, she was interested in sex and how Iceland’s famous and highly alcoholic hookup culture intersected with those feminist principles—because to Margot’s mind, those things didn’t go together. She’d been in Reykjavík for almost a month already, consulting with colleagues at the University of Iceland and conducting interviews with as many locals as she could convince to talk with her on any given late night out there on Laugavegur—the famous street where so much of Reykjavík’s nightlife happened—as they stumbled from bar to nightclub in the cold.

The name that kept cropping up was Thor Ragnarsson, the brand-new owner of the iconic Hotel Viking and the eldest of Daniel St. George’s sons and heirs. Thor, who they whispered personally practiced all the many wicked things his guests got up to at the hotel. Thor, who seemed to embody all the things Margot liked least about men—in bed and out.

Overtly sexual. Too physical.

Not that it mattered what kind of sex the man had in his private life, of course. Margot wanted to know what he thought about sex in general, that was all.

Of course that was all. Even if she was trapped here.

His secretary had politely refused all requests for an interview when Margot had started calling instead of emailing. So she’d decided to just show up today and see what happened.

But she hadn’t gotten past the lobby. Freyja had been polite but firm. The hotel proper was accessible only to its guests because complete privacy was its central promise, and Mr. Ragnarsson was unavailable for even a five-minute chat. It had been foolish for Margot to come here.

And now she had to pay for it.

“There are worse places to be snowed in,” Freyja was saying. “After all, we’re a hotel. There are those who get stuck in the snow out on the roads in these conditions and must hope for rescue.”

“Yes, but...”

“Why don’t you go and sit in our bar,” Freyja suggested. “Have a drink. Relax. And I’ll see how we can accommodate you tonight.”

It wasn’t as if Margot had a choice. She could see the way the snow was beating down outside. It swirled around on the other side of the glass entry doors with visibility of about an inch, leaving her well and truly trapped. She’d let herself grow complacent this past month in Reykjavík, clearly. She’d imagined that she could handle the snow the way the locals seemed to so easily.

And it had certainly never occurred to her that she could find herself stranded in a sex hotel. The whole building felt swollen with dark passions, with an undercurrent of sensuality weaving in and around everything, even the cheerful flower arrangements that adorned all the tables.

It was...disconcerting.

Margot had always viewed her body as an afterthought. She was a woman of intellect, not rampant, unchecked desires. She liked sex the way anyone did. Meaning, she enjoyed it. At its best it was fun. But she didn’t hunger for it. She certainly wouldn’t check into a special hotel to have particular kinds of operatic sex—mostly because she didn’t like opera that much when it was sung, much less acted out in the flesh.

But Margot kept her thoughts on sex hotels and operas to herself. She nodded stiffly at Freyja, then made her way from the reception desk across the lobby toward the great, high doors on the far side that looked like they belonged on a Viking longhouse and led into the bar.

Hotel Viking was beautiful, as befit the exorbitant cost of even a single night’s stay. It married the typical Scandinavian starkness of this part of the world with opulent details better suited to something more traditionally European and decadent, and somehow made it all work. And Margot found the hotel itself seemed to soothe her as she walked, not unlike a cool caress from a—

Get a grip, she ordered herself. She was not going to succumb to the sensual promise of this place. She wasn’t a guest here. She didn’t need a pageant with her orgasm when she could come happily and quickly and move on. She was an academic observer, that was all.

And she didn’t like the fact she had to remind herself of that.

Almost as if she was afraid of what would happen if she surrendered to this place. As if the lure of it was that powerful, even while she was doing nothing more salacious than walking across a lobby.

Margot dismissed that notion almost in the same instant. She wasn’t afraid. She was a tenured professor back home, a position that had required single-minded determination to achieve. She was a strong and capable woman, wholly self-reliant, to the point that her two last attempts at relationships had complained bitterly about her independence on their way out the door.

Good riddance, Margot had thought, once the sting of each departure had faded. Because she didn’t believe that independence was anything to be ashamed of.

And she certainly didn’t think that finding herself snowed in for the night in a sex hotel was any reason to fear she might lose that independence.

Annoyed with herself, she pushed through the double doors that looked like something out of Beowulf and walked into the bar. She couldn’t remember a time she’d ever needed a glass of wine more.

Inside, it was far more ornate than the lobby. Deep reds and golds somehow merged with a kind of industrial feel that, once again, shouldn’t have worked as well as it did. The light was dim and suggestive. There were seats grouped together in intimate little clusters, taking advantage of the deep shadows. Unearthly Icelandic music played while various configurations of hotel guests talked. Flirted. And maybe did more than that under the stout wooden tables where no one could see.

Stop seeing sex everywhere, she ordered herself.

Margot ordered a drink from the friendly bartender and carried a gratifyingly large glass of wine to a little booth facing the windows on the far side of the bar, where she couldn’t begin to figure out the relationships on display at all the other tables even if she wanted to. Instead, she had a front-row seat to the storm wreaking havoc outside.

Every now and again she saw glimpses of the surging sea far below, pounding against the obsidian volcanic rock the way it had done forever on this remote, northern island. But everything else was the snow. The wind rattled the windows, but it wasn’t threatening now that she was sunk deep into a comfortable seat, safe and warm.

And yet a kind of threat seemed to roll over her anyway, making her skin prickle.

“Excuse me, I—”

Margot stiffened. She lifted a hand without looking up, stopping whatever was happening before it started.

“Thank you,” she said coolly. “But I’d prefer to be alone.”

“You are trapped in an isolated hotel in the middle of a blizzard,” came the amused, decidedly male voice again, English spoken with an Icelandic accent that kicked its way down her spine like another caress. “It would be difficult to find more solitude than that.”

“I understand that this is a sex hotel,” she said crisply. She turned as she spoke, twisting around in her seat. And then looked up. And up further. And then still further, until she found the face of the man towering over her like a Viking god of old. “But I’m afraid I’m not a sex tourist. I’m just an accidental visitor.”

The man standing beside her seat laughed. Loudly and deeply, as if he might break the windows in another moment if he let himself go. And Margaret was surprised to discover that his laughter seemed to move in her, too. It washed down her back, then spiraled even lower, settling like a fierce heat between her legs.

“This isn’t a brothel,” he said, all that laughter a kind of honey in his voice, and pooling in her, too. It made her feel almost...sticky. It made her very nearly wish that she really was a guest like everyone else. Like him. “What dark tales have you been reading?”

“The reputation of the Hotel Viking speaks for itself.”

Margot was used to traveling alone. It rarely took more than a few cool words and an unapproachable expression on her face to deter unwanted male advances. Especially in Iceland, which prided itself on its civility. But the man standing over her was...different, somehow.

He was so big, for a start. Iceland was filled with tall men, broad of shoulder and long of leg as befit the descendants of Viking raiders. This man was all that, but something else besides. Something more. Every inch of him was packed with lean muscle, as if he carried a leashed danger in every sinew and held it in through sheer force of will.

And yet the way he stood there was easy. Lazy, almost.

Margot was meant to be a clear-eyed observer of humanity in all its complexities, damn it, so she was forced to acknowledge the simple fact that this man was easily the most striking she’d ever seen. He was beautiful, in fact. His hair was a tawny gold, worn in a careless length that looked as if he spent his days raking his fingers through it—or more likely letting others do that for him, if he spent time here.

And he had the face of a saint.

Nordic cheekbones. A carnal mouth.

And eyes so blue they burned.

Good lord, she burned.

“Exactly what have you heard about the hotel?” he asked in that same boneless, effortlessly suggestive way.

Margot tried to school her expression to her usual academic disinterest, but she couldn’t quite get there. Her pulse seemed to be everywhere, too hard and too fast. She fingered the stem of her wineglass and sat back in her chair, hoping she looked as irritated as she wished she felt.

“The hotel is the premier international destination for extremely high-class pursuits of pleasure,” she said, well aware that she was practically quoting from the website. “In whatever form they might take.”

“Perhaps you misunderstand the word pleasure,” he replied, but Margot doubted it. Not when she was looking at his mouth, hard and sensual. “A ‘sex hotel’ suggests a certain lack of consent. Prostitutes, for example. There’s none of that here. The Hotel Viking caters to consenting adults.”

“And of course there are no blurred lines,” Margot said, as if she was auditioning to be a Puritan, all pursed lips and clutched pearls, when all she really wanted to know was how he made the word consent sound so hot. “Not in such a fine establishment as this.”

“Some lines are better blurred.” There was a gleam in the wild blue of his eyes that made her think of the northern lights that danced in the skies here, unworldly and impossible all at once. “But lines are not laws. Laws, you will find, are taken very seriously here.”

She felt breathless, which was ridiculous. As if something about the simple fact of this man standing next to her table had reached inside her and scraped her hollow. Margot felt something like...jittery.

It was the storm, she told herself. The unpleasant novelty of finding herself stranded when she couldn’t fix it. She couldn’t walk away. She couldn’t simply call a cab. There was no amount of intellect or cash that could beat back the snow.

Of course she didn’t like it.

Margot told herself that was why she was reacting to this man the way she was. As if he was electric, when she didn’t believe in that kind of thing. She didn’t want it—it was messy and she hated opera and she had no interest in sex hotels on remote Icelandic peninsulas. She had too much work to do.

It was more than time to send him on his way. “It wouldn’t matter if this was a convent. I’m not interested.”

He laughed again, louder and longer than before. And once again, Margot could feel it everywhere, licking all over her like flames against her skin.

“I admire a woman who speaks her mind so distinctly. So there can be no mistake. You would be surprised how many people do not possess that particular talent.”

“And yet here you still are.”

“Forgive me,” the man said, and that mouth of his curved into a smile that Margot absolutely did not feel directly in her breasts. Or in between her legs. Because she liked sex that was fun while it was happening but didn’t interrupt her life afterward. Or even her schedule. She did not like...this. “I didn’t come over here to ask you for a quick little fuck while the snow rages down, as diverting as that sounds. I am Thor Ragnarsson. I believe you’re here to see me.”

He pulled out the seat beside her and settled himself into it, while Margot couldn’t seem to do a single thing but stare in shock.

Her heart was pounding in her chest, and her mind was spinning, desperately trying to figure out how she hadn’t recognized him, while her body was getting a little too...operatic for her peace of mind. It was the angle, maybe. She’d seen pictures of him straight on, not from below, looking up. She might as well have been kneeling before him, head tipped back to receive his cock—

She sat up straighter, ignoring the fact her ears felt red and singed with the force of her embarrassment.

It had to be embarrassment that made her flush like that. It couldn’t be anything else.

“Yes,” she said, stiffly, casting around for her lost professionalism. “Mr. Ragnarsson, of course. I’ve been trying—”

“This is Iceland. We are not so formal. Call me Thor.”

He was watching her intently and she told herself that was why his name seemed to sit there on her tongue like sugar. It wasn’t an unusual name, not here. But there was something about him that made her think less of Icelandic naming traditions and a whole lot more about his namesake. The god of thunder.

The god of sex, they’d called him back in Reykjavík, with those suggestive little laughs.

She fought back a little shudder.

“Thor, then,” she corrected herself. “I’ve emailed and left a number of messages. I am—”

“I know who you are. The American professor who wants to talk about sex.”

There was no reason that should have sounded the way it did—intimate, suggestive—when it was the simple truth.

“Sex in a cultural sense, not a personal one,” she clarified. “In case that’s unclear.”

His mouth curved again and its effect was even more pronounced when she was this close to him, tucked away in these high-backed chairs that concealed them from the rest of the bar. It was impossible not to notice how beautiful he was, there next to the howling storm outside. As if they were made of the same fury.

“Noted,” he said, those eyes lit with suppressed laughter.

And something else she chose to ignore, because it felt a little too much like a kind of aria, lighting her up from the inside out.

Margot fumbled with her bag, reaching for her notebook. “I have some questions to ask you. I’m mostly interested in how you think this hotel complicates the feminist reputation of Iceland’s women, particularly in a sexual sense.”

But when she wrestled her notebook to the table and looked up again, Thor was only sitting there in the same lazy way, studying her as if she fascinated him. As if she was the subject under consideration, not him.

Which she should not have found at all sexy.

“That is a very boring question.”

She’d been staring at his mouth, so it took too long to process his actual words. “I beg your pardon?”

“Is that really what you want to know? You could have put that in an email. Instead, you took it upon yourself to drive out from Reykjavík. You tried to argue your way past my reception desk. All this because you wanted to know such a tedious thing?”

There was something fluttering deep inside her, making her entirely too aware of the growing heat and softness between her legs.

“So your answer is that you find feminism silly?”

“Not at all. I celebrate it.”

He lounged there in his seat as if it was a throne and she was entirely too aware of him. The way his shoulders fit in the jacket he wore over a T-shirt that clung to the sculpted planes of his chest. How very long his legs were, thrust out before him. The way his hands moved on the arms of his chair, his fingers long and clever. He looked like what he was: a very confident, even arrogant man, who clearly imagined himself the winner in any game he chose to play.

But Margot had never been very good at losing.

“How exactly do you celebrate feminism?” she asked, her gaze steady on his, because she was the professor and he was the pervert, no matter the odd little scenarios that kept playing on repeat in her head. If she really did kneel. If he moved a little closer, here where no one could see. If he pressed into her from behind, her skin flushed and hot against the cold glass of the windows... But she had to stop this madness. “Is it by throwing one of your sex parties?”

“There’s nothing I love more than a woman who knows her own mind and every inch of her own body,” Thor told her, his teeth flashing in a grin that was much too dangerous for a man who looked so at his ease. Or maybe it was just too dangerous for her, because she couldn’t seem to breathe past it. “I find nothing sexier than equality, particularly in bed.”

It took everything Margot had not to squirm in her seat. She didn’t want to think about him in bed.

And she couldn’t seem to think about anything else.

“By your response, am I to assume that you think feminism is a sexual act?”

“It is when I do it,” he said, amusement flickering over his face. “But perhaps not for you, of course. You have my condolences.”

“I would prefer if you keep things professional,” she said, but for the first time in her academic life, she wasn’t sure that was true.

“I know all about your research, Dr. Cavendish,” he said, and Margot was certain she detected a mocking inflection to the way he said her name. Because, of course, Icelanders did not use titles or even surnames for that matter. “I’ve been receiving reports of you almost from the very moment you set foot on our little volcanic island.”

Margot frowned. “Reports?”

“If it had appeared that your questions bothered my customers, I would have had to encourage you to conduct your experiments elsewhere. You understand.”

Margot’s frown deepened. “You can’t think—”

“But all you have collected are stories.”

There was something in the way he said that that made her stop protesting. She found herself leaning forward, as if compelled against her will, except that couldn’t be right. Margot made it a point never to do a single thing she didn’t want to do.

Did that mean she wanted this? Him?

Because when Thor smiled at her, all thunder and heat, she just wanted to melt.

“Have you ever asked yourself what would happen if you stopped recording secondhand stories and found out for yourself?” he asked idly.

Though there was nothing idle about the way he looked at her.

She sat straighter, because it was that or succumb to the madness coursing through her veins, making her imagine...all kinds of things. Operas and perversities, decadent and lush, and his hands all over her while they did them. “Let me guess. This is where you offer to get into my pants, for the good of my research.”

“Icelanders fuck, Dr. Cavendish.” He lounged there, as intent and watchful as he was boneless. “They do not waste all this time talking. Fuck first, then, if it is any good, perhaps talk a little. Haven’t you already discovered this in all your research?”

She nodded, trying to pull herself together. “It’s that exact permissiveness that interests me.”

“There are some things that intellect cannot help you with. I think you’ll find that sex is one of them.”

Margot sat back in her chair. “I see no one has told you the most powerful sexual organ in a woman’s body is her brain.”

“You say that,” Thor said, a rich vein of laughter in that deep voice of his. “But I’ve had a remarkable amount of success with the clit.”

Which meant she could do nothing but feel that laughter in hers.

“Exactly what are you offering?” she asked, perhaps more harshly than necessary, crossing her legs against the intense throbbing sensation where she least wanted it. “If you wanted to hit on me, you should have said so from the start.”

“This ‘hitting’ on you,” he said, as if he was unfamiliar with the term. “As if attraction is an assault. Is that how you see sex? Is that an American thing—or is it you?”

Margot didn’t like that his comment landed, hard. It made her feel a little dizzy. “It’s a figure of speech.”

“Surely an academic such as yourself loves nothing more than to dig her claws into figures of speech.”

“Because you have a vast interest in academic pursuits, of course.”

“In pursuits, yes. Not necessarily of the academic variety.”

“They told me at the reception desk that I was trapped here for at least the night,” Margot said crisply. “Possibly more than one night, if the storm rages on. Is this the price of a room? Sex with you?”

The amusement in his gaze shifted, growing darker and more focused at once. For a long moment, he didn’t speak. He only watched her, and she thought she could see a muscle tense in his lean jaw.

Holding her gaze, Thor reached into the pocket of his jacket and drew out a key. It was an old-fashioned key with an exuberant flourish on its end. He placed it on the table between them with a decisive click.

“This is your room key,” he told her quietly. She was riveted by the thunder that stormed around beneath those seemingly soft words. “There is no price. You may stay until the storm blows itself out, with my compliments.”

“Did I... Did I offend you?” she asked, not certain why that possibility seemed to tilt madly inside her, as if she was on some kind of roller coaster.

“It is my mistake,” Thor said with a faint smile. “This is a cultural thing, I think. Icelanders talk very openly about sex. Having it, not having it. Who they wish to have it or not have it with. Offers are made, accepted, rejected. This happens all the time. I would have thought you’d know this, given your field of study.”

Once again, Margot felt off balance, and she hated it. “Is this the part where you try to make me feel bad, as if I’m somehow unsophisticated and repressed for calling you out?”

“You can call me whatever you wish,” Thor said, his voice deeper, somehow. Or maybe that was just how it felt inside her, where her body was acting as if it belonged to someone else. Someone who wanted sex to be a whole lot more than enjoyable. “I do not require payment for kindness. It insults me that you might think otherwise, but I understand. You come from a place where sexual politics are significantly more adversarial. You cannot help but fight, no matter what it is that you want.”

Margot didn’t know which was drier, her lips or her throat. Especially when he shrugged as if she was that easily summarized. That easily understood.

“And I suppose you’re here to tell me what it is that I want?”

“I don’t think it’s accidental that you chose to come to my sex hotel.” And the way he said those words, sex hotel, was like sharp blades. “On the day of a storm.”

“You think I planned to strand myself in a snowstorm?” Margot laughed and told herself it wasn’t the least bit forced. “For this? For you?”

He didn’t laugh. “I like sex. I’m not afraid of it.”

“I’m not afraid of sex.”

But there was something in the denial that made her wish she could snatch the words back. Especially when his blue gaze seemed hotter. Wilder.

“Maybe you are and maybe you’re not.” He shrugged. “What I know about you is that you have done nothing but watch. What I can offer you is the opportunity to do a little fieldwork.”

“Fieldwork?” She blinked. “Is that a joke?”

“I never joke,” he said, deadpan. “I’m far too perverse. Do you need to get to know someone before you sleep with them?”

“You say that as if it’s a bad thing.”

“Not at all,” Thor said. “But in Iceland, that’s back to front. I could sit here and tell you my life story or you could come to my rooms with me and I will show you. It will be there in the chemistry between us, or not. Every answer to every question you have, laid out before you clearly and inarguably.”

“Because you’re that good in bed.”

Thor laughed, though it was quieter than before. And somehow, she thought, more volatile. “I don’t believe in ‘good in bed.’ Either people connect or they don’t. One woman’s sex god is another’s dud. It is all chemistry.”

“What if we have no chemistry?”

He smiled at that and it felt like fire. Then he leaned forward, putting his hand on the table, his palm up.

“Maybe we don’t.” He nodded at his hand. “Why don’t you touch me and see.”

Margot ordered herself to remain calm. She couldn’t remember the last time a man had tied her into knots the way this one was doing so effortlessly.

Was that chemistry? Or was she in over her head with this latter-day Viking?

This was her opportunity to put them back on proper footing. Before things spiraled even further out of control.

But Margot wasn’t one to back down from a challenge. Instead of turning it over and over in her head the way she probably should have, she leaned forward and slid her hand over his.

She expected him to be strong. For his hand to be warm and to envelop hers the way it did. But the contact jolted through her like a flash of lightning, and she had to bite back the involuntary little noise she made.

Not that it mattered. She could see from the burning thing in his gaze that he felt it, too. And more, that he had heard her.

As if he could feel that same lightning. As if it crackled in them both.

“Here is your opportunity to be less American and more Icelandic,” Thor said, his voice rougher than before. Lower. “You’ve been trying to talk to me for weeks now. This is your opportunity.”

“You’re not offering to talk.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Thor murmured. His palm slid against hers as he flipped her hand over. “I’m fluent in all kinds of languages.”

Margot fought the urge to yank her hand away from his. Because there was too much sensation, suddenly. Because she’d completely lost control of this interaction. Because there was a part of her that didn’t quite know what to do with all the wild things she could feel storming around inside her, competing with the swirling snow outside the windows.

Be practical, she ordered herself. Think this through.

It was unorthodox, certainly. But she would be lying if she tried to pretend that she hadn’t wondered what it would be like to be one of those Icelandic girls, casual in ways she had never quite managed to be.

Margot had never had sex with a stranger. She wasn’t the kind of woman men tended to pick up in bars. Because she was generally unimpressed with drunken attempts at conversation. And because she preferred to spend her time in libraries and classrooms. The men in her life had always been like her, academic and intellectual and more interested in an intense conversation than sex.

Not so intensely physical and overwhelming that she’d forgotten they weren’t alone in the room.

Maybe it was time to see what all the fuss was about. And who better than Iceland’s god of sex?

“It would be for research purposes only,” she heard herself say.

Thor’s impossibly carnal mouth curved. But his eyes were like flame. “Of course.”

“Just sex,” Margot said. “And only during the storm.”

“If you insist.”

“I do insist.” There was something about the way he was regarding her then, leashed and ready, as if he knew something she didn’t. As if he knew her better than she knew herself, which Margot didn’t like at all, no matter how wet the notion made her. “And no kissing.”

She wasn’t sure he would agree to that, and the more she stared at his mouth, the more she wondered why she’d said it in the first place. Because the urge to lean forward then, to crawl across the table between them and set her mouth to his, was nearly overwhelming.

But that half smile of his only deepened.

“No kissing,” he agreed.

“Great,” she said brightly, as if they were discussing the kind of sex she studied, not the kind she was going to have. “I’m sure one round with the self-styled king of fantasy will be a perfect experiment.”

Thor took his time standing up from his chair. He didn’t let go of her hand, so Margot found herself standing with him. For a moment it was awkward, and then he pulled her toward him until she was this close to falling against his big, broad chest.

And worse, wanted to.

“I do love an experiment,” he said, in a kind of drawl, all command and blue fire. “But prepare yourself, Professor, because it won’t be just once.”




CHAPTER TWO (#u4b9be9ff-c5ee-53e0-90bd-34e07d12aef4)


THE PROFESSOR HAD purple hair.

Well, it was more properly a deep lavender. It cascaded over her shoulders and caught the light, and was almost impossible not to reach out and touch.

But he managed it.

It wasn’t as if Thor had never seen brightly colored hair on a woman before. Still, he had never met a woman so determined to present herself as profoundly serious while supporting such...unserious hair.

The contrast intrigued him.

But then, everything about Margot Cavendish was intriguing.

Why had she come all the way to his hotel in the middle of a storm, for example, only to pretend that it was some kind of accident? It wasn’t as if Thor was a hermit. He made it into Reykjavík often. It would have been easy enough for this American professor to camp out in one of his city clubs if she really wanted to run into him.

Thor did not believe in accidents. He’d been running Hotel Viking for almost six months now, ever since the man he did not consider his father in any real sense had left it to him in that odd will. The same will that had also presented Thor with two half brothers he’d never met—and wasn’t sure he wanted to know. And one thing he’d learned in his months as the proprietor of the world’s finest and most remote purveyor of fantasies was that no one rolled up to this place by accident.

Oh, they might tell themselves otherwise. They might make up all kinds of stories to convince themselves they hadn’t meant to come here. As if it was possible to accidentally end up in Iceland. Or to take a wrong turn in the middle of Reykjavík and end up hours away on a lonely little peninsula that was near absolutely nothing but the pitiless sea.

It never took long to reveal that, in point of fact, they’d been heading for Hotel Viking all along.

Thor led the prickly, lavender-haired professor out of his sumptuous bar, built to be an endless celebration of luxurious sin. He nodded at the bartender as he went, smiling when he saw that one of the guests—a Mr. Oliveras from Portugal—was chatting Kristjan up.

“Do you let your employees date your guests?” his professor asked as they passed.

Thor was fairly certain that was a touch of judgment he heard in her tone. But that wouldn’t surprise him. Thor had yet to meet an American—no matter how supposedly liberal—who didn’t carry that country’s moralistic roots inside themselves somewhere.

He allowed that he found that just as fascinating, having not a shred of the puritanical anywhere in him. At all.

“Some establishments that cater to the kinds of sexual fantasies we do have all kinds of draconian regulations about the behavior of staff toward guests, but Hotel Viking isn’t one of them.” Thor smiled down at her and wondered why he so badly wanted to taste that intriguing little furrow between her eyes as she frowned at him, very obviously thinking at him. “Our staff are encouraged to follow their passions as they like.”

“That sounds problematic.”

“Only if you find happy, satisfied and loyal employees problematic. I do not.”

He kept one hand in the small of Margot’s back as he moved her through the big bar doors and back into the gleaming lobby, as much to maintain contact with her as to guide her anywhere.

And also because he suspected any hint of chivalry would irritate her. The more irritated she was, the more likely she was to stay off balance.

And Thor had a powerful urge to rattle this woman, just a little. Just enough. To peel away her composure and see beneath it.

He had thought she was attractive from the first moment he’d laid eyes on her, stalking across his hotel and then sitting as far away as it was possible to get from the place while still being in it. But it was something else again to talk with her.

Especially when she’d been so committed to shutting down what she’d seen as his unwelcome advances. Thor couldn’t remember the last time he’d been rejected. He’d enjoyed the experience, if he was honest.

And he’d enjoyed her.

Thor liked her brain—especially when he could see her using it.

At him.

He’d always had a thing for smart women, but he found himself particularly intrigued by Margot, who seemed to be so delightfully unaware of her own body’s needs and the way she was broadcasting them. He could feel her anticipation even now. It was like a hum just beneath her skin and he could feel it in the fingertips that grazed her back.

Thor led her across the lobby, smiling at Freyja behind the main desk, and headed for his private elevator far in the corner.

“Let me guess. You’re taking me to your dungeon.”

Thor studied Margot as they stepped into the lift and she put as much distance between them as it was possible to get in such a small, enclosed space.

“I can tell that you are joking,” he said after a moment. “But perhaps not entirely joking, yes?”

“Of course I’m joking.” She sounded fierce. But Thor noticed that it wasn’t until the elevator doors were closed behind them and the lift moved upward that she released the breath she was holding. Her shoulders inched down from around her ears.

“Professor, you must trust me on this, if nothing else,” he murmured, enjoying himself far more than he should. “You are in no way ready for the dungeon.”

He was fascinated anew by the flush that stained her cheeks and swept down her neck. And the suggestion of heat—and a thousand questions—in her gaze.

And more than all that, the fact she didn’t reply.

Thor felt certain that her silence said a great deal more than she likely wished to reveal.

“Why no kissing?” he asked mildly as the lift rose, slow and steady. He lounged across from her, crossing his arms and his legs at the ankle as if they were off to discuss something prosaic. Numbers, perhaps. Or taxes.

Margot frowned. “You agreed.”

He couldn’t quite hide his smile. “I agreed, yes. I’m wondering why.”

“Because it made more sense that way.” She blinked, as if she hadn’t wanted to say that. Or not quite that way. “Kissing is too...”

“Intimate?”

He watched another flush of color move over her face, deeper this time, making an interesting counterpoint to the lavender of her hair. It made her look prettier, though that shouldn’t have been possible. It made her look delicate, and oddly young in contrast to the scowling severity she had exuded down at the bar.

And he felt that like a long, hot lick down the length of his cock.

“Kissing is something you do in a relationship,” Margot declared as if she had a doctorate in the subject. It was possible she did. “It has no place in this sort of arrangement.”

“You say that with great authority. Have you had many such arrangements?”

“We already agreed that this is for research, Mr.—” She stopped herself. “Thor. There’s no need to confuse the issue.”

He shrugged. “I cannot say that I have ever found kissing confusing.”

“You also consider sex to be about as intimate as a handshake. It’s possible that you’re not really the ideal control group for this experiment.”

That amused him. “I can tell the difference between sex and a handshake.”

He wondered if she realized that she had crossed her arms over her chest, too. Mirroring him, perhaps. Or Thor supposed it was possible she was simply naturally defensive. Either way, that awkward bristling, endearing as it was, melted away the more professorial she got.

He filed that away.

“You said downstairs that you get to know people through sex.”

“There is little that’s more revealing. I mean that literally, of course.” His mouth curved. “As the participants are usually naked.”

“And modesty is not a huge concern here, is that right?”

“It is my belief that false modesty has no place anywhere,” Thor replied. “But Icelanders spend a lot of time in the baths, as I’m sure you know. We are used to seeing all sorts of different body shapes. It is not like America, where you are bombarded with images of unhealthy bodies constantly. It’s a wonder that Americans ever take their clothes off at all.”

Margot nodded as if he’d confirmed something for her. “So your position is that sex ought to be as casual as a trip to the hot tub. And you would prefer to start with sex rather than beginning with a coffee or a dinner date, which I’m sure you know is more common in other countries.”

He laughed. “It must surely be far more awkward to share a meal with someone who, for all you know, will completely fail to satisfy you in any way sexually. Why waste all that time?”

Thor was being somewhat facetious. But there was something about the way she frowned at him. There was something about the way her theories seemed broadcast across her face. He could see her turn over the things she thought, one after the next. He wasn’t entirely sure why he thought it was so hot.

And why not play into her ideas about their cultural differences? She wasn’t entirely wrong. Thor had spent a very informative year in America when he’d been of university age. He had been amazed at the gulf between the permissiveness of the American media, in all its forms—like bikini-clad models on hand to sell a hamburger—and the actual behavior of its citizens in private.

“Do you consider yourself a sexual libertine?” she asked him, in a matter-of-fact tone of voice, as if the word libertine was one people usually threw about so casually in conversation.

“Are you asking for personal reasons, given what we’re about to do? Or is this more of your general research?”

“Research. Of course.”

“I have been called many things in my time,” Thor replied. And then laughed. “Why do you ask?”

“Yours was the name that came up repeatedly while I was doing interviews on Laugavegur. I’m trying to decide if you’re different from the average Icelander or if you’re a decent representative of Icelandic mores.”

“I consider myself a unique little snowflake, of course.”

“Well, there are a lot of those in Iceland,” she said. She smiled. “Snowflakes, I mean.”

Thor liked that. He liked the glint of challenge in her hazel eyes that looked gold in the elevator light. And he was looking forward to getting his hands in all that hair.

“There is a great deal of snow in Iceland, it is true. Just as I believe there are a legion or two of purple-haired women in your precise demographic. Is that not so?”

Margot reached up and tugged on a strand of her hair. “I like it.”

“But why do you like it?” Thor asked, mildly enough. “Isn’t this the sort of thing you study? Why it is that certain habits or choices—casual sex, let us say, or the sudden rise of purple-haired women—suddenly sweep the planet?” He studied her as she stared back at him. “Perhaps we all like what we like, Professor.”

He wasn’t sure she liked that too much, but then they arrived. The elevator doors opened smoothly and delivered them directly into the owner’s penthouse that rambled over the entire top floor of the hotel.

Thor walked in, turning on a light here and there as he went. He didn’t look back to see if Margot was following him. He didn’t have to. He could hear her feet in her heavy winter boots on his blond wood floors.

“This is...” He could hear the nerves in her voice, making her sound huskier than before. It made him that much harder. “Stark.”

“Nordic, I think you mean.”

“This seems excessively Nordic.”

Thor stopped in the center of the vast living room and looked around. It was all open space, exposed steel beams and floor-to-ceiling windows that let the best and worst of the weather in. The furniture was low and spare with a modern edge. Geometric shapes, designed to make the most of the space and to enjoy what little light there was for half the year. The living area was designed to feel three times its size, and it did. But then, Thor was a very large man, a credit to his Viking forebears. He wasn’t fond of tight, cramped little spaces with low ceilings and no air.

“The rest of the hotel veers toward the lush,” he said, looking back at her. “I prefer something a little more austere.”

“Clearly.” But she kept walking toward him, even though her arms were still crossed over her chest. “I imagine that tells me all kinds of things about you.”

“That I am a product of my environment?”

“I was thinking more...lush in the streets and stark in the sheets.”

Thor let out a laugh at that and watched Margot blink, as if she hadn’t expected it.

“I don’t think stark is the word, but you will have to let me know what you think after you’ve experienced my sheets, I think.”

Thor led her all the way across the living room and then into the bedroom on the far side. It featured a wall of windows with mechanized shutters to keep out the white nights in summer, thick rugs on the floor, and his bed wasn’t the least bit clean and spare. It was a towering four-poster monstrosity that looked as if it could entertain the entire hotel.

“Better?” he asked. “Less offensively Nordic?”

She stopped just inside the door and swallowed convulsively. He watched the way her throat moved and felt it ripple through him like some kind of honey.

He moved over to the wall that faced the bed and set about building a fire in the large fireplace that was set halfway up one wall, sleek and smooth.

By the time he had the flames crackling, Margot had inched a little bit farther into the room.

He took that as a good sign. “You look remarkably nervous for a little research trip.”

“I’m not nervous at all.”

“Professor.” Thor was still squatting there before the fireplace. He turned without rising so he could keep his gaze trained on her. “This is not going to be very much fun if you lie to me.”

Her brows drew together. “I’m not lying.”

“Perhaps you do not mean to lie.” He shook his head. “But look how you are standing. Stiff. Tense. Profoundly unwelcoming. What am I to make of this body language?”

“Why do you have to make something of it?”

“Margot.” Thor liked the way she reacted to her name in his mouth. He more than liked it. He felt the air between them ignite. “I am not in the habit of fucking women who look about as excited at the prospect as they might a trip to the dentist.”

She actually jolted at that, then scowled, which he already understood was her natural progression in all things.

“You’re reading me completely wrong.” But her voice was flat, contradicting her own words.

Thor stayed where he was. “Am I?”

“I told you. This is supposed to be about research. And the research is not about me.”

“You are the one doing the research,” Thor pointed out. Patiently. “With me. And I prefer a little more enthusiasm. It is a requirement, in fact.”

“I’m enthusiastic.”

“You are quite obviously nothing of the kind.”

“I don’t think you have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

“Probably not.” He lifted a brow. “Prove me wrong, then.”

He wasn’t sure what Margot would do. But then again, that was precisely why these situations fascinated him. How better to know a person than to see what they would do in unforeseen, fraught circumstances?

Thor shifted back on his heels and stayed where he was. He could stay there all night, watching Margot think.

And he wondered what it would be like to know her better, to be able to tell what sort of thoughts they were that made her frown like that; that made those clever eyes of hers glitter.

She pressed her lips together as if she was girding her loins for a potentially unpleasant task, and then she marched toward the huge bed.

When she reached it, she threw a look at him as if she expected him to comment on what she was doing, but Thor only smiled. And waited.

Margot tossed her coat onto the leather chair next to the bed. She threw her bag down beside it. She did both with a level of aggression that Thor would have laughed at, had he not felt the moment was perhaps a little fragile.

So he said nothing. He waited.

Holding his gaze, Margot sat down on the edge of the chair and began to work at the laces of her boots. They were the high kind, with fur around the tops, and it took her a moment to loosen each side, then pull her leg out.

Again, she looked at Thor as she took each boot off and set it beside the chair with a certain ferocious precision.

And again, he only watched. And kept his own counsel.

“Are you just going to sit there?” she demanded.

“I am,” he replied. “I don’t think it’s my enthusiasm that requires proof, is it? After all, I’m the reason we’re here and not exchanging barbs and very little wine down in the bar.”

“You’re the one who said consent was sexy.”

“I beg your pardon.” He kept his gaze on hers, steady. Demanding. And had the great pleasure of watching that telling flush move over her face. “Do you not find me sexy?”

She didn’t answer him with words. But there was no noise in the room, save the crack and pop of the fire, and so he heard the breath she let out. In a rush.

Thor felt that was answer enough.

Her chin tipped up in another show of whatever this was. Aggression. Nerves.

Or, something in him murmured, how little she knows her own desires.

His were far more straightforward and he wasn’t in any doubt about them. He wanted to get inside her. He wanted her astride him, that lavender hair cascading all over the both of them as she rode him. He wanted his hands on her breasts and he wanted to hear what she sounded like when she came.

The sooner, the better.

She held his gaze then, steady and sure, which he doubted she knew was perhaps the sexiest thing she could do.

Her hands were busy with her clothes. She pulled off the jumper she wore, a thin merino wool. Then the base layer she wore beneath it. She stood there a moment, as if reveling in the fact that she was standing in front of a stranger wearing nothing but a pale blue lace bra that cupped a good-sized pair of breasts, round and plump. Her waist nipped in, then out again, to the flare of her hips.

Thor’s mouth watered.

He let his gaze track over her. He estimated she was around five feet seven, and she wasn’t skinny. She had the sort of athletic build that Thor liked best—muscled, capable and solid. She looked like a woman who could walk anywhere, hike a mountain if she felt like it and then spend a long, hot night with a lover.

Perfect, in other words, for a man like Thor, who liked to sweat in a variety of settings.

When he didn’t say anything, Margot went to work on her trousers. She pulled off what looked like snow pants, revealing another base layer. When she pulled that off, too, she worked her socks off at the same time, and then he watched as she carefully, ferociously, folded every item she’d peeled off and set it on the chair in a ruthlessly neat little pile.

And then his professor with the magical hair turned back around and stood before him in only her bra and a surprisingly suggestive pair of thong panties in a bright pink leopard print.

Thor’s mouth went dry.

Her legs were as lean and muscular as the rest of her, and long enough to give him particularly bright fantasies of how they would feel looped over his shoulders.

“Well?” she asked. In her voice that was both huskier than before and more than a little belligerent. “Are you satisfied?”

“That you know how to remove your clothes?” He did nothing to keep the amusement from his voice. Or the heat. “Yes, I am satisfied. But if this is enthusiasm, Professor, I am tempted to imagine you do not know the meaning of the word.”

The look she gave him then was something like murderous, so Thor wasn’t sure why it made him want to laugh. He thought better of it.

Margot made a frustrated sort of noise in the back of her throat. Then she moved again, unbuckling her bra and throwing it on the chair beside her. Then she hooked her fingers in her panties and tugged them down her legs, before kicking them off.

Then she was naked.

And it was like the blizzard that raged just there outside his windows disappeared. As if the world narrowed to this single woman in this shadowy room lit by the fire.

He took a long moment to appreciate the way she gleamed while the firelight licked and danced over her lean curves and gently sculpted limbs—and to make sure he was completely in control of himself despite the storm of need that pounded through him.

She was pale. She had a tattoo that wrapped around her left side, a series of typewritten words declaring her persistence. She wore a little silver ring in her navel.

And in between her legs was a triangle of strawberry blond curls.

Thor felt his pulse batter at him. In his temples. His chest. His heavy cock. He took his time lifting his gaze to hers again.

“Is that your natural hair color?”

“That’s a personal question,” she retorted.

“It was a rhetorical question. I feel certain nature did not gift you with purple hair, no matter how, exactly, you persist.”

Her hazel eyes looked like dark gold coins in the firelight. And they narrowed as she stared at him.

“Yes,” she said stiffly. “Sometimes I’m a redhead.”

Thor stood then. He was aware of the way she tracked his every movement. The way her gaze dropped to play over his chest. Then bounced back up to his face again, as if she felt guilty for taking pleasure in him.

“Explain to me what is intimate and what is not, please,” he said as he moved toward her. Slowly. Almost lazily. “You do not wish to kiss on the mouth. But you’re already naked. Your nudity is not intimate, but a question about hair color is?”

She scowled at him. He didn’t know why he found that...delightful.

“We’re supposed to be having sex,” she said, her voice ripe with impatience. “Not playing these ridiculous ‘get to know you’ games.”

“Oh, Professor,” he murmured. “I haven’t even begun to play games.”

Margot breathed harder the closer he came. He liked it. It told him more things about her than he imagined she knew she was giving away, and he liked that, too. He moved over until he stood next to the bed, facing her.

Still holding her gaze, Thor reached out and patted the mattress beside him.

She swallowed again, visibly, and he watched in fascination as she fought with herself. He could actually see the fight. It was as obvious to him as if she was taking swings at herself.

Her fists clenched and released. Once, then again.

Then she moved, jerkily, and climbed up to sit on the very spot that he’d patted with his hand.

He moved so he was standing at the side of the bed, then. He moved himself between her legs so she was forced to open them even wider. Thor leaned forward, planting his hands on either side of her as she fell back, catching herself on her elbows.

He wasn’t even touching her. But he could smell her arousal. He could see it in that telltale flush that moved down from her pretty face to cover the whole of her chest. Her breasts sloped slightly to the sides and the nipples were already pink and hard. Flushed, they seemed to gleam like heat.

She was breathing as if he was already inside her.

“Why is this a struggle for you?” he asked with deliberate politeness, as if he’d offered to call her a taxi.

“It’s not a struggle at all.”

“Liar.”

That flush of hers got brighter. Redder.

“I don’t know,” she whispered.

“That’s not good enough, Professor. Try again. Use that brain of yours.”

“I’ve never done this before.” She said it in a rush, as if it was a confession. “I’ve never—You’re a stranger.”

“You have researched me already. You know far more about me than if I was merely a stranger you met in a bar.”

“I don’t pick up strangers in bars.”

“You didn’t pick me up, either. It was quite the opposite, if you’ll recall.”

She stared at him a moment. Then that chin of hers tilted up again.

“Is this why you got me naked?” she demanded. “So we could talk?”

Thor laughed at that, and even that made his impatient cock ache. He shifted so he was leaning over her more, bearing her back against his bed.

“Remember,” he told her sternly. “You’re not allowed to kiss me no matter what happens. This is your rule.”

She frowned at that, as he had known she would. She was sucking in a breath, no doubt to share her indignation, when he dropped another inch and took one of those pink nipples in his mouth.

Finally.

And whatever she might have said was choked off. Then turned into a cute little sound of need that Thor liked.

A lot.

Margot moaned something, but he didn’t pay attention to it.

He paid attention to her gorgeous body instead. He lavished that first nipple with attention, testing the lush, perfect shape of the other with his hand.

Then he switched places, and as he did, he learned her responses, her taste. The way she writhed beneath him, shifting her legs and lifting her hips. She slid down off her elbows and arched her back, offering him more of her.

More access. More of those hot little noises.

More.

But it got even better when she lifted her hands and sank them into his hair, not to stop him or guide him, but as if she couldn’t help herself.

And after a while, Thor could feel the ache of his own need edging toward pain in his cock. But he didn’t hurry anything along. He explored her, reveling in his own delayed gratification.

Because his ornery American was giving herself to him, and he wanted to marinate in every single moment of it.

He moved from those velvety nipples down to her soft belly, where he amused himself with that belly ring of hers and her shuddery responses. He tested the span of her hips with his hands, and when he was tempted to bury his face between her legs and drink her down, he thought better of it.

For the moment.

He flipped her over onto her belly instead.

She made a low sound as he crawled up onto the bed and dropped down closer to her. He set his mouth behind her ear, then made his way to the nape of her neck.

He found that he could make her squirm.

And he did.

Thor followed a meandering path down the length of her spine, then made her shiver and buck a little when he found the sweet curve of her ass.

He let his thumbs graze that dark furrow and the sweeter heat beneath, but he didn’t go deep.

He didn’t know why he was restraining himself until she made a low, hot sound of protest. He grinned, then nipped at her nape, using his teeth lightly until she was shuddering all over again.

Only then did he turn her over yet again.

He ran his hands along her legs, enjoying the play of her quads and her calves. He found her ankles and then lifted her, draping her legs over his shoulders.

Margot was breathing fast then.

Heavy, hard.

And there was a wildness, a glorious heat, in her gaze that hadn’t been there before.

He held her ass in his hands again, levering her up off the bed so she was at an angle.

And it was impossible not to notice that she was exactly the right size, scaled to fit him perfectly. He could lift her. He could play with her. And soon enough, he would be so deep inside her it would feel like coming home.

Thor was actually shaking a little, he wanted to fuck her so badly.

“I want to lick you until you scream,” he told her, and his voice was gruff. He felt so greedy and insane with need. “It’s my preferred version of a handshake.”

“Oh my god.”

“I am named for a god, it is true. Are you calling out my name, Professor? Or is that a prayer for deliverance?”

She sucked in a breath that sounded like a moan and writhed in his grip. Her hair was spread out around her, a bright tangle on the bed.

“Why are you talking about it?” she demanded, her eyes too dark and too gold, and furious. Thor could relate. “Why don’t you just do it?”

“If you want me to do something, Margot,” he told her, clipped and dark, “you need to ask for it. By name.”




CHAPTER THREE (#u4b9be9ff-c5ee-53e0-90bd-34e07d12aef4)


MARGOT’S ENTIRE BODY was rioting.

Everything seemed connected. Her breath. Her pulse. The wild heat that stormed through her and made her want to do things she couldn’t even name—things she’d never thought she’d have the slightest interest in before tonight.

Before Thor.

She didn’t understand what had happened. One moment she’d been in complete control. She’d been aware that he was baiting her, but that had been fine. She’d had more than a little anxiety about what she was planning to do, and the fact that Thor kept challenging her helped. She’d undressed as she wished, making certain that the entire exercise felt like what it was: work.

Then everything had shifted, rendering her something like drunk when she’d barely tasted her wine. But that was how it felt. The imposing walls of this penthouse of his had seemed to slip and slide, and the heated floor beneath her feet had seemed to buckle.

It was something about that arctic blue gaze of his and the way he fixed it on her, as if he didn’t care what that kind of intense focus might tell her about him. It was the way he’d stayed there, low before the fire as if he didn’t hum with all that lethal energy and had done nothing but...watch.

Even thinking about it made her shudder where he held her, lifted up and off the bed though her shoulders were still pressed into the mattress.

And Thor was still dressed.

Somehow that made it all hotter. Dirtier. He was fully clothed while she writhed about, flushed red and naked and wide-open to him.

Imagining what she must look like to him made her shudder again, perilously close to another wild shattering.





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