Page 11 of Renard's Deliverance

But the people here were mostly decent.

They tried to take care of their own.

“Fine, but hypothetically, if you had a woman and she was threatened by someone, what would you do?”

“Easy.” He grinned, aware that he probably looked feral. “I would lock her up and go hunting.”

Opal didn’t shy back or look uncomfortable. Then again, he hadn’t really expected her to.

Instead, she nodded slowly. “That’s what I thought you would say.”

“You here alone?”

Opal glanced around. “I sure am.”

“Bit of a smartass, huh?”

She grinned. “I try.”

“I know what to do with smartasses.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

He leaned forward until his face was inches from hers. “I spank their little asses until they can’t sit down for a week.”

There.

That ought to get her to back the fuck off and disappear.

She smiled. “Hmm. Promises, promises.”

Fuck.

“I am not for you, girl,” he told her in a rough voice.

That smile disappeared. “Didn’t say you were. Had plenty of men spank me before, doesn’t mean they became mine. And I’m not a girl.”

No, she wasn’t.

But he’d chosen to call her that on purpose. To put a barrier up between them.

Because there was something there . . . something he could almost touch and taste.

And he didn’t want it there.

He didn’t want to look at her and think that she was sexy as fuck. He wasn’t looking for a quick fuck or a relationship.

You need to go to the club.

He hadn’t been into Saxon’s for months. Something that was making him antsy. Itching away at him.

It was too bad that he had to steer clear of this woman.

She was fucking gorgeous and in a past life he would already have her in his bed.

“Aren’t you?” he murmured.

“No. I’m definitely not. And I’m not talking about my age. I could be ten years younger and still not be a girl.”

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