Unleashed

“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?”