Ian drew a deep breath and cleared his throat, trying to focus his thoughts. “Yes,” he murmured, his voice cracking. Confusion, exhilaration, insecurity. He’d made love to his fair share of women, but suddenly, he felt like a complete rookie. If he could barely talk to her, then how the hell did he expect to seduce her?

“They make me feel…inadequate,” he said as he stepped away. He wandered over to another sculpture. Ian studied it for a moment, then winced, the instinct to avert his eyes a bit too ingrained in his psyche.

“I know,” she said with a wicked smile. “Sometimes it’s difficult for men to appreciate my work at first. But you have to get over that whole urinal thing.”

He gasped. “What thing?”

“You need to see the cock as a work of art,” she said. “Not as some kind of yardstick you all measure yourself against.”

Her use of a nonmedical term for the male anatomy only added to the desire racing through his body. The word sounded so tantalizing coming from her lips. “A yardstick would be overkill for most men.” Ian pointed to the sculpture. “This isn’t all there is to the male body.”

“But it’s the most important part,” she said, her tone becoming passionate. “It all comes to this, don’t you agree? Life, death, love, hate, fidelity, betrayal. This is the essence of what it is to be a man. This is what drives you, what makes you who you are, right?”

“No,” Ian said. “Well, not entirely. I mean, not all the time. Though most women would like to believe we think with our…penises, it’s not true. We do use our brains on occasion.”

What the hell was he doing, discussing penises with this woman? How had they managed to take a very promising meeting and turn it into some psychological examination of men’s libidos?

Marisol reached out and ran her hand over the sculpture, her fingers caressing the sculpted penis as if it were real. Ian’s reaction was immediate and intense, the blood rushing to his crotch. It didn’t take much imagination to see how she might touch warm, living flesh. His warm, living flesh. He could almost feel it now.