by Tawny Weber
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 st
orm 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.”
Don’t miss UNLEASHED by Caitlin Crews, available October 2018
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er Harlequin® DARE books and ebooks are sold.
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Copyright © 2018 Caitlin Crews
ISBN-13: 978-1-488-03913-3
Blame It on the Mistletoe
First published as A Babe in Toyland by Harlequin Blaze in 2010
This edition published in 2018
Copyright © 2010 by Tawny Weber
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