Page 22 of Competing Against Thor

"I know what I'm good at," he responded, his tone low and full of some kind of promise. "But your sculpture last week was so much better than mine. I liked what you did with the toadstool."

"I used your technique on that one."

"I noticed," he responded. "I used yours for the leaves, but it didn't work nearly as well."

"Probably because your hands are bigger than mine." Without thinking, I reached over to touch his hand.

He caught mine, and stroked his thumb across my fingers. My breathing hitched and there was a longing inside me that was nothing to do with Danny's suggestion.

I cleared my throat. "Next time, you should try using it on bigger flowers."

"Mmm, I can try that."

"And I liked the runes you did the other week," I said, barely able to think straight because of his touch.

"Ah, yes," he responded, nodding his head as if he was thinking about it. "I love working with them, it feels like I can write whatever I want and nobody will understand it."

I scoffed. "You think nobody knows how to read runes?"

"Do you?"

"Well, no. But I'm sure there are plenty of people who know how. Scholars, really old vampires, sculptors claiming they're Norse gods."

"Then I'll let you in on a secret," he said. "It didn't make any sense, I was just writing nonsense that looked good."

"I don't know whether to believe you or not."

"Why would I lie?"

I opened my mouth to say something in response, but realised I had none. There was absolutely no reason why he'd lie to me. And that included about his name, though I still wasn't entirely convinced that he was the god he was claiming to be.

"So, I do have a question for you," he said.

"Let's guess, you want to knowwhyDanny was trying to seduce you for me?"

"I'd probably have worded it a little differently, but that's the jist of it."

"He knows I'm feeling bad about being knocked out of the competition, and suggested that I should have some fun to take my mind off it."

"Ah, would that work?"

I shrugged. "Depends on who I'm in bed with. If it's bad, then it's not going to take my mind off anything."

"That's not true. If it's really bad, you'll probably thinking about when it's going to end."

I snorted. "All right, that's fair. So no lying back and thinking of Scandinavia?"

"If you were in bed with me, you wouldn't be thinking of anything."

"That's quite a promise." I leaned back in my chair and took a sip of whiskey, eyeing him up and wondering whether this was going where Danny intended it to after all.

He chuckled. "One I can assure you I'd fulfil, but I also promised that sex was off the table if you sat down."

"So you did." And I was starting to think that was a mistake to agree to that on my part, but I wasn't about to start unpicking that now. It was also nice to sit and talk, especially when I was still hurting a little from being eliminated.

Chapter 11

DAISY