Unleashed

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.”

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