Page 6 of Bad Blood Bear

“Vagina teeth?” he asked. “Is that even a thing? Because I’m pretty sure it’s just an urban legend.”

“I wouldn’t take the chance, if I were you,” she said coolly. “What if you were wrong and your dick got chomped off? How would you feel then?”

He had to give her props for having stainless steel balls. Not many women would take on a guy his size with nothing but a knife and trash-talk. Although, that could be more evidence of the crazy.

“I’ll keep my dick in my pants, thanks,” he said. “I really wasn’t planning on taking it out.”

There was a silence.

“Okay, in that case you should let me go,” she said. “You’re bleeding on me.”

“Well, whose fault is that?” He let her go, stepping back out of knife range. His bear didn’t like letting go. It made him feel cold and empty and agitated.

She gave a derisive sniff. “Your fault. You sneaked into my squat like a squat-stealing rapist thief. You might not believe this, but some guys would think they were entitled to have sex with me, just because they bought my lunch.”

Tank sighed. “That’s not why I did it.”

“And yet, here you are. Following me home.”

“Well, you did kiss me in the diner,” he pointed out. “And you bit me. Some people might interpret that to mean you wanted to have sex with me.”

“Oh.” She smelled embarrassed now—but also aroused. And there was that odd scent he couldn’t identify—the one that smelled wrong. “Good point.”

“But you don’t want to have sex with me, even though you kissed me.” No, of course she didn’t. He didn’t want to have sex with her either. Nobody was having sex with anybody.

But he did want to know why she’d kissed him.

She sighed. “I don’t actually know why I did that. Although you have to admit, you are pretty hot, even if you’re the size of the Incredible Hulk. When he’s Hulked out. If you asked nicely and maybe took me on a date, I might have sex with you sometime, but I don’t feel like it right now.”

This conversation was nuts. He’d been right the first time—this was a damn stupid idea.

He blew out a big sigh. “You have sex on the brain, you know that? That’s not why I followed you here.”

“Well, why did you? If you weren’t after my attack vagina.”

Tank flinched at the thought of imaginary vagina teeth, and shook his head. “This is stupid. I should never have come. I just wanted to see if you were okay. You seemed sick, in the diner, and your scent is strange.”

Damn, he shouldn’t have said that, either. She was making him lose his sanity.

She hunched in on herself a little at his words, as if embarrassed, but then she stood up straighter and raised her chin. “I can’t help the way I smell. I do the best I can, but I can’t afford fruity shampoo and fancy-ass body wash. And anyway, it’s not like squats with showers grow on trees.”

Squat. Following her ‘home.’ Suddenly the words sank in. “You live here?”

Tank looked around at the desolate room, full of dusty metal shelving and littered with snack wrappers, empty soda cans and miscellaneous trash. Of course she lived here. Her scent was everywhere. It was just…why would she be living in an abandoned building?

“We don’t all get to live in McMansions,” she said, as if she’d heard his thoughts. “There’s no call to be all judgy about it. This is my squat, which, in case you’ve never been on the street, means a place you stay in when you don’t have a regular place to live. For your information, this is an A-number-one squat.”

He’d been homeless, a couple of times. But he’d lived mostly in the woods—his bear wouldn’t like living in the city. He wouldn’t have minded this place, though, in those desperate days. It didn’t make a bad den, for a bear.

But he didn’t talk about those times. Not the first time, after Angie died, or the last time, when he and Flynn and Tristan had hidden out in the woods before they took over Alexander Grant’s hunting cabin.

He couldn’t tell if she was serious about how great this place was. But he could see she had pride—she wasn’t going to let his opinion of her drag her down. Suddenly, he wanted to know more about her. Where she came from. What she was doing here. Why she was alone.

“So what makes this an A-number-one squat?” he asked.

She narrowed her eyes, as if wondering why he was asking. “You have to promise not to poach,” she said. “I still have the knife and the attack vagina.”

“Stop saying that,” he muttered. The very idea made his balls shrink up.