Unleashed

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

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.”