The Dare Collection October 2018. Nicola Marsh

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.”

      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