Unleashed

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.”