And now he had the opportunity to show her who she was, too.
It was a privilege.
Margot was breathing hard and a little too fast through her nose, and he could see the sheen of glassiness that made her eyes gleam ever more gold. Her hands kept forming into fists at her sides, then releasing. Over and over, as if she was this close to bolting.
But she didn’t balk. She didn’t break.
And when he reached over to liberate that wrap from around her shoulders, the only reaction he got was the faintest, finest little tremor snaking down her torso before she squared her shoulders and repressed it.
Out in the main, rambling room of his penthouse that he liked because it told visitors nothing about him, she looked like the finest of the art he collected and hung in the house he kept in the city. Except better. More precious.
Thor stood back from her and took a moment to admire her. All that fine, flushed skin. The upturned pink of her nipples, the strawberry blond curls between her legs. And the lavender hair that fell all around her, cascading over her shoulders in a kind of artless invitation.
And she trusted him.
It was enough to make him lose it right there, but he didn’t.
Somehow, he didn’t.
He took her hand and led her out from the seating area where they’d eaten, closer to the enormous fireplace that was built into one sleek wall and looked as if the fire rose directly from the decorative volcanic rock. But he didn’t stop there. He kept moving until they stood before the giant window that in good weather looked out over the brooding sea. Tonight it would be much too dark and stormy to see anything even if he’d had all the lights on.
Which he didn’t. So what he saw when he looked at his window was Margot’s reflection in the glass and, here and there, hints of the driving snow outside.
He stood behind her for a moment, soaking in the view.
He could also see that Margot didn’t like it. He saw the way her brows drew together, and that snap in her gaze when it met his in the glass.
“See?” he murmured, snaking an arm around her middle to haul her closer to him and enjoying the feel of her, silky and warm. He held her with her back flush against his front so she could feel his heat. His strength. His greedy cock in the small of her back. “Your nonverbal communication comes across loud and clear. You do not want to look at yourself like this. You do not want to be on display. No doubt you have some concerns about objectification.”
Her nostrils flared slightly. Then, slowly, she nodded.
Thor brushed her hair away from her neck on one side and bent to taste her there, sweet and hot.
“Perhaps it is time we talk about the differences between objectification and admiration,” he said, right there against her skin where he could taste the way she trembled. “You assume that being on display makes you less, somehow, when we raise our gods and our icons high, the better to adore them. We elevate the things we cherish. We create pedestals, cathedrals, museums. Why should it be any different between lovers?”
He put his hands on her skin, running one palm over that tattoo on her side that declared her persistence. And he moved the other higher on her rib cage until it rested just below her breast, and tried not to let the sight right there in the window before them roar through him unchecked, because he wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep himself under control if it did.
“You were so concerned about power dynamics earlier,” he continued. “But ask yourself this. Did I give you orders or make suggestions? And if I did issue an order, why are you focusing on the order rather than your need to follow it? Is it problematic if you want to do it or only if you think I want you to do it?”
He studied her face and that frown she still wore, though her teeth were clenched down hard on the napkin. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen anything prettier or more compelling than Margot fighting her need to tear that napkin from her mouth and light into him with all those mighty words she knew.
But it was his turn to do the talking.
“If we are two consenting adults and we both get something out of a power dynamic, why must it be considered problematic at all?” he asked. “Why do you imagine you get to decide how it is that other people get off in the first place?”
She made a little noise of protest and he smiled. “It seems to me that if a woman tells you that she enjoys submission, as you claim you do not, you are the one who is infantilizing her if you decide that the only way she can enjoy such things is if she has somehow betrayed herself. Or does not know her own mind sufficiently to make that determination. If a woman tells you that she is no victim but you decide that you know better, who is truly victimizing her?”
Thor didn’t glance toward her face to see if he could divine her answer from her expression. He didn’t need to. He could feel the way she trembled in his hands. He indulged himself instead, shifting his palm so he could cover one of those velvety nipples that stood there, pink and proud.
He moved his palm in slow, lazy circles and kept his mouth at her neck.
“I think that no matter how you try to politicize sex or what good intentions you might have for doing it, all you truly end up doing is judging personal preference. And my suggestion to you, Professor, is that personal preference is none of your business.”
And he punctuated that thought by finding her hot, wet pussy with his free hand.
He could hear the moans she made in her throat, sweet and needy. He could feel that same neediness in a rush of damp heat against his fingers.
Thor stroked her folds, gently playing with her clit. Almost as if it was an afterthought, and her hips moved as if of their own accord in time to his every light, teasing stroke. Her hands fisted and released at her sides.
Again and again.
“All this research you do. All these papers you write. All the many ways you try to convince yourself that this isn’t real.” He put his mouth to her ear and it was as if he could taste her arousal, all that delirious heat. He made his strokes longer, lazier, and felt the way her hips hitched. “Does it feel real now?”
She made another noise. Frustration. Helpless need. Thor reached over to take one of those convulsive little hands in his, then drew it between her legs.
And had the particular delight of feeling her freeze. Then bloom with heat.
Everywhere.
“Feel yourself. Your pussy doesn’t lie, Margot.” He was teaching her a lesson, and yet it was the first time he hadn’t called her Professor. And that seemed to strike an odd little note in him, a ringing like a bell that seemed to move in all his limbs at once, but he shoved it aside. “You’re either wet or you are not. Your pussy knows exactly what it wants. And it has no compunction about telling you. Feel your wetness. Feel how you quiver. Your body knows what it needs, what it desires. It is only you who are confused.”
She made another one of those angry, frustrated sounds and he smiled, there in the crook of her shoulder where she could feel it.
“If you could talk, would you tell me that you are not confused at all? I think you would. But that’s the trouble with words. They are indirect. They stretch across feelings and analyze them, contain them, change them in the telling. Your body is more direct. Uncompromising, you might say. There’s a certain purity in a hard cock and a wet pussy. Everything else is a complication. Everything else is what we put on it, not what it is.”
He slid his fingers over hers, there in all her slickness, and showed her exactly what he wanted her to do.
“Make yourself come,” he ordered her, his voice like a growl. “And the beauty of the gag in your mouth is that you cannot tell me if that’s possible or impossible. You can only do it.”
She