“Come back to me, honey,” Ren urged.

I shook my head again. “No. I can’t.” I stopped talking, started pacing then kept babbling. “I have to sort this out in my head.”

I continued pacing and Ren didn’t say anything.

This didn’t last very long before he said something.

“Jesus, you really can’t deal with being mean,” Ren murmured incredulously.

I stopped pacing and whipped around to face him. It was dark but I still could feel he was watching me.

“Not to someone who doesn’t deserve it!” I yelled. “I’m all for a smackdown if a bitch is a bitch. But Sadie is no bitch.”

“No, she’s not,” Ren agreed cautiously.

“So that means I kicked a sister when that sister was low. I don’t do that shit, Zano.”

“Fuck, you’re back to Zano,” he muttered.

“What?” I asked sharply.

“Nothing, honey. Just come here, will you?”

I shook my head again. “No. I…” my eyes narrowed on him and I re-asked an earlier question. “What are you doing here?”

He gave me the same answer. “I was worried about you.”

“You ditched your date because you were worried about me?”

“Yes,” he answered immediately.

Shit.

What did I do with that?

“Ally, look at me,” he ordered.

I was looking at him, or at least I was looking at his shadow. But he sensed I wasn’t focused, and how he could sense that, I had no clue. It weirded me out and made me feel all warm inside at the same time.

Still, I focused on him and he sensed when I did that, too.

Yikes.

When I did, hesitantly and gently, he asked, “Did something like what happened to Sadie happen to you?”

Oh God.

He thought I’d been raped.

That was why he was worried.

I couldn’t let him think that so I replied softly, “No, Ren.”

“Back to Ren,” he whispered.

Oh shit.

He was trying to figure me out.

I couldn’t let that happen.

Okay, time to end this.

“I—” I started to do that, but that was as far as I got.

“Shut up and listen to me.”

I clamped my mouth shut, and I did this with a bit of surprise and not a bit of temper since he’d suddenly turned macho alpha on me.

Before I could start yelling, he started talking.

“I don’t know what’s up with you, but tonight, watching you at the gallery in a dress that succeeded in making me fight my dick getting hard faster than that other one, and your response to what went down with Sadie, I don’t give a f**k.”

He’d been watching me?

When?

And how did I miss that?

Ren kept talking.

“You take the backs of that crew of yours like your blood flows through their veins. Indy may be their foundation, Daisy and Shirleen the emotional support. But you’re the backbone.”

Jeez.

How did he know so much about the Rock Chicks?

And why did what he said make me feel even warmer inside?

And last, why the hell was he saying this shit at all?

He didn’t make me wait for an answer to the last.

“You don’t need to make amends to Sadie. You’re set on giving her a lifetime of sisterhood the like she’s never had before and never even dreamed of having. That’ll do it, so you can let that go.”

That was all nice, and true, and made me feel better, but unfortunately he wasn’t done.

“You’ve got your way, the way you are and the way you are with the ones you care about. And that tells me, a man gets in there, you give that to him, the children you give him, that man will be all kinds of lucky. And I’ve decided we’re gonna see if that man is me.”

Oh my God!

Was he crazy?

He’d just been gazing softly at Ava (well, not “just”, but not three months ago either!) and now he was saying this shit to me.

“Zano, we’re done,” I reminded him.

“You can be done, but I’m not. So we’re gonna explore this and see where it leads until we both make a decision we agree on about where it’s heading.”

Oh crap.

Now he was giving me the macho alpha bossy shit.

“Zano, I—”

“Shut it.”

My back snapped straight. “Don’t you tell me to shut it, Ren Zano.”

I watched his shadowy head shake before he stated, “Baby, you’re gorgeous. The way you wear a dress is goddamned foreplay. The way you give me everything and nothing, making you a challenge only a real man would accept, is all kinds of hot. The way you give as good as you get in bed, totally unselfish at the same time phenomenally greedy… fuck,” he growled, and I felt that growl straight in my happy place. “You’re the best I’ve ever had, Ally. Bar none. And the way you love, stubborn, tough, unshakable, is unbelievably f**kin’ beautiful. And still you’re a serious pain in my ass. But I found, not havin’ you, I got off on the pain. I missed it. So I’m takin’ it back and we’ll see how it goes.”

“I know how it’ll go,” I returned. “Nowhere. We’re done, Zano.”

“Tell me you haven’t missed what we had,” he demanded.

I clamped my mouth shut, because even for self-preservation’s sake, I couldn’t utter that colossal of a lie and I was totally down with lying if the situation warranted it (or when it didn’t and I just needed to save my own hide).

He knew it, damn it all to hell, and I knew he did when he whispered, “Come here, Ally.”

I put my hands on my h*ps and stated, “If you want to rewind and start up again, I’ll consider it. But, pointing out, we’re rewinding, not rewriting. We’re f**k buddies, Zano. We enjoy each other. You go your way. I go mine.”

“We were never f**k buddies, Ally.”

I wished.

I also rolled my eyes.

“Now come here,” he went on.

I rolled my eyes back to hm.

“Tell me, exactly, why it is I have to walk the three feet that separates us?” I asked.

He was on me in a flash, which meant I was in his arms, plastered to his body. He had one hand in my hair cupping the back of my head, holding it steady for whatever he wanted to do to me.

Great.

That was on me. I’d challenged the alpha and there I was.

I knew better.

One could say I was seriously off my game tonight.

God!

And he felt good. So freaking good. Hard with his heat burning into me.