Page 8 of Odin

At last, he came to a door with a warning sign that read:

CAUTION: OUTER DOOR CAN BE BLOCKED BY SNOW. PLEASE USE SHOVEL PROVIDED.

Finally – something Odin understood. He could shovel snow with the best of them. One particularly bad winter, the snow had piled up around the longhouse as high as the roof, and they'd had to dig their way out. He, Thor and Loki had turned it into a contest, to see who could clear a path to the outbuildings first. He'd won, of course, with Thor not far behind. Loki hadn't even reached the yardhouse when Thor stepped in to help him. For the first time, he wondered where they were, and why they were not here with him. Jarl Erik's witch had enchanted both of them before his eyes, while Erik promised they would rise at his command when the time came.

Yet none of them were here now. A mystery to solve for another day. Right now, he had to dig his lady's longhouse out of the snow, before the new storm he could see coming buried it any deeper.

Odin pushed open the door, shouldering his shovel, and stepped into watery sunlight.

And turned to stone.

TEN

If the police were paying her a visit, then she should probably make sure she hadn't left university property along the side of the road to be damaged or stolen, Freyja told herself as she rugged up to go retrieve the scooter.

One look out the front door had her swearing and headed back to the supply room to borrow a pair of snow boots. She hadn't bothered to bring her own with her because it was supposed to be the height of summer, with record ice melt due to global warming – hardly the time to have a snowstorm.

Yet here she was, trudging through snow in her borrowed boots, determined to find and bring back that scooter before those thunderheads coming over the mountains arrived. She hadn't checked the weather forecast, but she didn't need to know the specifics to be sure those clouds looked bad.

When she reached the road, she wouldn't have found the scooter if it weren't for a wheel sticking up from the snowdrift on the opposite side of the road to the one she'd flown into. Worse, the snow around it had hardened to ice overnight, so it was a bastard of a job to dig the bloody thing out. Twice, she'd considered going back to the lab for a shovel, but she wasn't sure it would be much use against the ice.

Eventually, she managed to drag the ice covered contraption onto the road, where she kicked enough frost from the tyres to get them to move, so she could slowly wheel it back up the driveway.

Her arms felt ready to fall off by the time she reached the end of the driveway, and turned the scooter around the corner of the building, toward the garage.

Only to find the snow was too deep to go any further. While she'd been busy with her hot Norseman last night, it must have snowed again, and all of it had been blown into the courtyard, burying the helipad, the ugly sundial, and any chance she had of leaving the lab via any mode of transport other than her own booted feet.

God, and it was getting dark, with no sunlight to be seen. The clouds that had been hanging over the mountains earlier were looming over the lab now, and snowflakes were already falling. The wind had started to pick up, but they were in the lee of the building here, so the wind hadn't reached the courtyard yet. So when she saw movement...

She wanted to thank every god that had ever existed. So there was a maintenance man, after all. She'd never been so thankful to see a man with a shovel in all her life.

"Hey, you! Any chance you can help me clear a path to the garage, so I can put this away before the storm hits?" she shouted.

He turned.

The scooter would have dropped from her suddenly nerveless hands if the front wheel weren't firmly stuck in a snowdrift.

It was HIM. The owner of that hot Norse cock she'd ridden half the night. Only now he was wearing overalls and instead of those firm hands wrapped around every curve of her naked body, he was holding a shovel.

She'd fucked the maintenance man?

The incredibly hot, muscled beast of a maintenance man.

Had he been wearing an eyepatch last night, or had she been too intent on the rest of him to even notice that particular detail?

She shook her head. It had been a one night stand, a night of meaningless sex where they hadn't bothered to exchange numbers or even names. It meant nothing. Sure, one look at him and she could feel him thrusting hard between her thighs, but she could ignore that.

What mattered was that she was in charge here at the lab, and he was just the maintenance man. He was here to do his job, so she could do hers.

Which meant she had to be professional, and in control, and pretend her underwear wasn't totally soaked at the sight of him. She fixed her gaze on his chest. On the name badge on his chest. Not thinking of any of the hard muscles underneath the overalls at all. AT ALL.

"Olaf, right? You're the maintenance man here? Shovelling snow?" she asked.

She was pretty sure he'd spoken English last night, but now she wasn't certain. Her Norwegian was limited, so if he didn't, this was going to be a whole lot harder than it had to be.

Or not hard enough, her traitorous libido sniggered.

Even the clouds were trying to help her, sending a flurry of flakes between them so she couldn't see him for a moment.

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