already too-beautiful face. “But it is like a summer storm. All that noise and carrying on, yet they do not have any control.”
“But you do.”
Another laugh, and it was just as dangerous as before. “Do you doubt it? I’m sorry. I must have lost track of how many times I made you come.”
She felt her ears get hot. Some part of her wanted to curl into a ball and hide under the couch, but he’d told her about this. Icelanders talked about sex. With a frankness that made every last bit of Margot’s Midwestern soul curl up and want to die.
But she told herself this, too, was part of the experiment she was conducting.
She inclined her head. “I counted.”
His smile was delighted. And infinitely wicked. “I am pleased to hear that. I did, too.”
“I suppose it could be the novelty,” she continued, frowning a little. “As you said yourself, there’s no such thing as a sex god. There’s chemistry. But that always wears off, usually pretty quickly.”
“Here is what I do not understand.” Thor moved to sit down, and he didn’t choose the chair across from the couch like a civilized person might have while discussing this research project they were undertaking together. Instead, he settled himself on the other end of the same couch where she sat, making it that much smaller in an instant. And he did it in that same languid, boneless way he did everything, lounging there and taking up more than his fair share of the couch, which only made Margot frown. “Your field of study is sex, is it not?”
Her frown deepened. “Well, sex is a fairly broad category, obviously, and my specialty is significantly narrower because I’m primarily concerned with—”
“I will take that as a yes.”
“—human sexuality in cultural contexts. I’m specifically intrigued by the particular intersection—”
“Professor. Control yourself.” And there was that curve in his mouth again, which meant that when she obeyed him it felt like some kind of caress. She didn’t understand that, either, but it made that humming thing inside her grow deeper. Louder. “I don’t want to debate your thesis. I’m sure it’s fascinating. What specifically intrigues me is that you live and breathe sex in your work, yet seem singularly disposed to take the joy out of it. Why is that?”
“I don’t think I do that at all.”
“I have known you for a few hours and already I understand that you think sex is in many ways a chore, that you think chemistry comes and goes and cannot be depended upon. You think men cannot control their penises and you have a great many strange ideas about what any man is capable of in the course of an evening. You seemed astounded that I made you come at all, much less over and over again.”
Margot felt as if she’d fallen, hard, knocking all the air out of her body. “I think you’ve read me wrong.”
He lifted his shoulder, then dropped it, and even as she struggled for breath, it was impossible not to notice how beautiful he was and, worse than that, how she could feel him in parts of her body that she’d never paid all that much attention to before.
“Who have you been sleeping with?” he asked in that same mild tone.
And ordinarily, of course, Margot would have been outraged at a question like that. A person’s sexual history was no one else’s business, unless she chose to share it of her own volition. But something about the way Thor had asked the question kept her from reacting like that.
His tone was so...cool. His gaze was clinical.
It was exactly what she should have wanted. She couldn’t understand why she didn’t like it much.
“I never pick men up in bars while drunk, if that’s what you mean,” she heard herself say. “Not that I’m suggesting that there’s anything wrong with that. I support sex positivity in all its forms. Everyone should be able to enjoy sex wherever they find it, in whatever way they like it, as long as it doesn’t harm anyone and assuming they’re able to voice their explicit consent.”
“Everyone should be able to do these things, yes. Of course. But you do not.”
She didn’t. She’d never really enjoyed sex that way, with the kind of cheerful merriment that she thought she should have, but Margot didn’t know why it made her uncomfortable to say so. Out loud, anyway.
To Thor, who had made her come over and over and over with what even she had to admit had seemed a lot like reckless abandon.
“I’ve had partners, Thor. I just met them under different circumstances.”
“How mysterious. Did you grow them in a lab somewhere?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes. I spend most of my time on university campuses, after all. I’ve met most of the partners I’ve had through academics in one way or another.”
“I see. You are usually seized with a sudden passion while flipping through piles of research books, or some such thing.”
She frowned. “Not quite. I’m not sure I’ve ever been seized by passion, thank you. That sounds like something that ought to be checked out by a medical health professional.” Thor laughed, and Margot kept going. “I meet a man. We talk. We usually talk quite a lot, in fact. How else can you possibly know if you suit?”
Thor’s mouth curved. “You fuck them, Margot. You can talk until you’re blue in the face. You can tell each other all manner of stories. You can compliment each other on your smart ideas and funny jokes. But if you have no sexual chemistry, then all you can ever truly be is friends.”
“Not everything is about sex.”
“Perhaps not. But I think you’ll find that fucking usually is.”
“You’re obviously looking for a more physical sort of relationship than I am. I couldn’t possibly consider someone as a partner if I didn’t feel that we connected on an intellectual level, and I’d always choose a very good friend with an astonishing brain over a fuck or two.”
“Why must you make that choice?”
She smiled at him. “You and I are different people. We look for different things.”
“I can’t decide if that was sad or patronizing.”
“I’m not trying to insult you. You don’t have to understand the things I need. I’m a tenured professor. You—”
She stopped herself, but it was too late. His dark blond brows lifted.
“I own a sex hotel and can therefore be assumed to have no intellectual interests whatsoever. A great and glorious tenured professor such as you, of course, is such a towering mind that you could never find yourself enslaved by the demands of the flesh.” But he laughed. “Am I your intellectual equal, Professor? Because I suspect your body likes me just fine.”
“It doesn’t matter who likes what here. You’re not my partner.”
“Indeed I am not.” That sat there between them. Margot told herself it was absurd
