The Dare Collection October 2018. Nicola Marsh

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,