Page 20 of Thor

He wasn’t sure what his expression showed but her smile fell immediately, making him want to punch himself for having upset her.

What the hell was wrong with him? Why was he acting weird over a woman he’d recently met?

“Come on,” he said. His boots clunked across the floor as he headed for the backroom. He shrugged off his leather coat and hung it on a hook on the wall.

“Are these your motorbikes?”

Thor looked over his shoulder to where she ran her fingers over his favorite bike.

“Yeah. That one is called Tanngrisnir and the other is Tanngnjóstr.”

Her eyebrows drew together for a moment. “Wait. You turned your two beloved goats into motorcycles?”

He folded his arms over his chest. “You sure do know a lot about me.”

“Well...”

The flustered expression on her face made Thor smile. Could she be more adorable?

“It... it’s not hard to find out about a Norse god. The legends about you are, well, legendary. I mean, how many movies and TV shows have they made with you in them? Like a million?”

“So, you learned about me through watching actors pretend to be me for entertainment?”

“I prefer to read. Back... where I came from, I had a huge library. I read all kinds of things. Like how you would eat your goats when you got hungry.”

Irritation spiked inside Thor. “I ate them one time. One. And the whole thing got blown way out of proportion. They made it sound like I did it frequently. And I will have you know Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr begged me to eat them. They said if I starved to death they didn’t want to belong to anyone else. They begged me to eat them and not die.”

“Did they beg you to cause one of them a limp too?” she chided.

“That was all Loki. Idiot. He convinced a boy to mess with Tanngnjóstr’s bones after dinner. I didn’t find out about it until it was too late.”

She smiled.

“You’re messing with me.” Man, she sure knew how to rile him up— in more ways than one.

“I’m not sure what that means, but I am jesting with you. But you haven’t answered my question. Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Did you turn Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr into motorcycles?”

Again, her pronunciation was spot on. He shook his head and opened the back door. He stepped into his fight room and a series of loud bleats sounded from the corner.

“Yeah, I hear you, you noisy beasts.”

Elle squealed in delight. “You didn’t turn them into machines.” She ran to the pen where Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr stood on their hind legs begging for food.

Before he could warn her they didn’t like other people she was at their pen, grabbing their faces and kissing them. Thor stopped mid step, processing the scene. Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr didn’t like anyone. They barely tolerated him after thousands of years. But there they were, hamming it up and licking Elle all over her face like she was the best bale of hay he’d ever given them.

He stared in disbelief for several minutes, listening to her coo and laugh at the goats while they nipped at her shirt and fought each other for her attention.

What in the underworld is it about that girl?

Thor finally walked over and scooped some pellets from the ancient barrel and dropped it into their trough. “All right guys, back up. Give the woman some air.” He pushed the goats down and Tanngrisnir nipped his arm.

“Hey!” Thor pointed at the goat. “I’ll eat you again. I will.”

The goats backed up and snorted at him several times, stamping their feet.

---