The grin widened, her posturing adorable. Abel wasn't looking for a fight, but it seemed it might be all too easy to provoke one. He paused a few steps after her, turning to face the woman once more. She wasn't bad to look at, scars and tattoos aside, and even those added some hints at a past laden with trauma and interesting stories. The defensiveness, though, said she'd be a difficult nut to crack when it came to intimacy.
"Does the term 'overcompensation' ring a bell?" The smell didn't disturb him; in fact, it was interesting, his nose parsing the various scents to find hers underneath. The sweat, the grime, the smoke all worked so very hard to hide the woman beneath it, which Abel found interesting. "My guess is you didn't take too kindly to other children on the playground teasing you, did you?"