LITMIR.BIZ

       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

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