Draven stopped dead in his tracks and looked back at her. “I fear no man.”
Cocking her head, she tsked. “But I am not man.”
“Do you think me daft that I don’t know that?”
She raised a sharp brow at the anger in his voice. “Well, the way you treat me would leave me to think otherwise.”
Sensing his imminent defeat, Draven sought to retreat to safety. “If you’ll excuse me?—”
“See,” she said triumphantly. “There you go.”
He paused in confusion. “There I go, what?”
“Treating me as if I’m something other than a woman.”
His head ached from her logic. “If I’m not treating you as a woman, then what, pray tell, am I treating you like?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” he asked incredulously.
“I don’t know.”
“Then why are we having this discussion?”
“Why not?” she quipped.
Draven looked askance at her. There was a playful air about her, and a note of mischief. “You are toying with me, aren’t you?”
The devilish light in her eyes deepened. “And if I were?”
“Then I’d say stop it.”
“Why?”
“Because it annoys me.” He started back down the stairs.
“I’d rather be annoying than ignored,” she said, raising her voice as she followed down the stairs after him. “That is what you’ve been doing all morning is it not? Ignoring me?”
“And if I were?” he asked without stopping.
“Then I’d say stop it.”
Draven pressed his hand to his temple in frustration at her using his words against him.
He stopped on the bottom step and looked at her. “How is it you do this to me?”
“Do what?” She held such a look of innocence on her face that it almost made him laugh.
“Talk circles around me. I swear I’m becoming quite dizzy from it.”
“Perhaps you are dizzy from something else?” She arched a brow.
“And that would be?”
She shrugged, smiled, and descended the stairs. “How should I know,” she tossed over her shoulder. “I’m not the brooding ogre. I’m just a woman, plain and simple.”
Draven growled low in his throat. Plain and simple described her like pebble described Gibraltar.
