Friendly Persuasion. Dawn Atkins

a test of their manhood. I know how to fix him—restring his squash racquet with low-test catgut. That’ll destroy him.”

      “Scott’s a good guy. And since when have you been so Neanderthal?”

      “Good point. I’m a lover, not a fighter.”

      A lover. She felt that charge again. Looking at him made her feel even worse. The stud in one ear complemented his smart-ass half grin, faint stubble and tousled hair, black as his shirt.

      “Anyway, he can’t be that good if he was bad to you.” He squeezed her upper arm.

      Great hands. She felt a tickle between her legs. “You’re sweet.”

      “It’s just an act.” He winked at her.

      But it wasn’t. Not when it came to her, she knew. They looked out for each other.

      “You’re too good for those jokers,” he said. “Too smart. When you flash your intellect, their little willies just shrivel up.”

      “Oh, please.” But she felt better all the same. Because he was a man, she guessed, with a man’s view. And he was a friend, which made him safe—and absolutely not a viable sex object.

      Ross accepted the mug of two-toned ale from Tom, saluted Kara with it, then took a drink. She watched his Adam’s apple go up and down, noticing how his neck muscles slid. He was in great shape for someone too lazy to go to the gym. He must do something athletic despite his claims to the contrary. It couldn’t just be sex, could it?

      “So what happened?” He licked the foam off his upper lip in a way that made her insides clutch. “Not too many gory details, though. Nothing about how big he is, or any of that. I might be intimidated.”

      “Oh, stop it. Women don’t care about size. It’s only men who always want to whip it out and compare. It’s not the boat, it’s the ocean, or the motion, or whatever the hell that saying is.”

      He chuckled, low and sexy, and leaned forward. “Pretty lusty talk for the mistress of sedate. What’s up? Did he make you feel unattractive? Because you’re hot. Never forget that.”

      She blushed. “No. It just didn’t work out.” She watched, transfixed, as he slid his fingers along the mug’s surface. He had long artist fingers. Fingers that knew what they were doing everywhere they went.

      “Come on. Give me the scoop. I tell you about all my women.”

      “Like I have to pry those stories out of you. You can’t wait to spill. I can’t believe you broke up with that woman—Heather, wasn’t it?—because she sounded like Minnie Mouse when she climaxed.”

      “It was more than that. She didn’t like Otis Redding.”

      “Now that’s unforgivable.”

      “Come on. Tell me,” he said, his voice so kind and full of affection her throat tightened.

      So she told him about the drawer and the smothering, and Ross frowned and studied her face, made that “mmm-hmm” sound like a doctor with a troubling diagnosis, and finally said, “You were wasting yourself on him.”

      She smiled. “You always make me feel better.”

      “My pleasure.” He patted her hand, the gesture soothing as a hot bath.

      “Tina thinks my problem is that I get too serious too fast,” she continued. “From lack of, um, experience.” She blushed. Here she was revealing how sexually limited she was to a man who’d provided fireworks for dozens of women.

      “With sex, the issue is quality, not quantity… Take it from someone with the Gold Seal of Approval.” He winked, teasing.

      “Lord, you’re arrogant. So, you’re saying I’m picking bad lovers?”

      He shrugged. “Could be the Teeny Peenie Syndrome.”

      “Enough with the penis stuff, Ross.”

      “I mean that figuratively. Feelings of inadequacy. Ask any shrink.”

      “Oh, you,” she said, pushing his arm—more muscular than it looked, she noticed. Things about Ross tended to sneak up on you. He acted more casual about work than he was, for example. She’d seen the satisfaction on his face when a client loved his work, and he listened hard for the bottom-line results of their campaigns.

      He had delicious eyes, she noticed—a liquid gold-green, with sexy crinkles at the edges. “Anyway, Tina thinks I need to learn to have sex for the sake of sex, so I don’t get hung up on the wrong guy because I think I have to fall in love with him to sleep with him.”

      “Makes sense, I guess, in Tina’s world view. She’s a girl after my own heart.”

      “How come you never slept with her, anyway?”

      “Who says I haven’t?” He winked. “Nah. We’re friends. Sex is sex and friends are friends.”

      Now they were getting closer to the delicate subject she couldn’t stop thinking about. “Could you ever, um, have sex with a friend?”

      “Depends on the friend.” He picked up his mug and began a long, slow drink.

      “How about me?”

      Ross choked on his beer, set it down hard. “You’re kidding, right?” He laughed.

      “It was Tina’s idea,” she said, wounded that he found it so hilarious. “She thought I should sleep with someone completely unsuitable, and of course you were the first person we thought of.”

      “Ouch,” he said, wincing in pretend pain. “That’s not very nice.” He studied her, then seemed to sense her hurt. “It would be weird. We’re friends.”

      “I know,” she said. “I feel the same way.” Except for the electric jolts she’d been getting since he sat down.

      Being around Ross was so much fun, it made up for any bruise to her feminine ego his treating her like a buddy had given her. She loved watching a new idea hit him—like a pinball striking every bell and bar, making him light up and zing. And whenever she got upset about a client, she went straight to him and he’d have her blowing off steam playing darts or Nerf basketball or running up and down the fire escape singing Queen songs.

      “I wouldn’t want to mess up our friendship,” Ross said.

      “Right. And sex messes things up.”

      “Not always,” he said. “It can be absolutely simple and carnal.” He gave her that look.

      She faltered. “But we’d make a terrible couple. We’re opposites.”

      “They say opposites attract.” Was he just teasing? “But there’s sexual incompatibility to consider, of course.”

      “Wait a minute. Am I being insulted here?”

      “Not at all.” He grinned. “You’re fine. We’re just different. You’re sort of buttoned up and pressed down. And I’m, well, never buttoned.”

      “That’s because you’re always in a T-shirt. And I’m not always buttoned up.”

      “Oh, yeah?” He gave her a mischievous look. “Twenty bucks says you’re wearing granny panties.”

      To her chagrin, she remembered she did indeed have on her stretched-out elastic, full-size cotton undies today. “That’s not fair. All my fancy ones happen to be in the laundry right now.”

      “My point exactly. My women don’t wear panties—fancy or otherwise.”

      The thought of Ross contemplating her decidedly unsexy underwear mortified her, so she teased back. “Besides, I would never sleep with someone with so many notches on his headboard it probably looks like a saw blade.”

      “Oh, no. The notches are from the handcuffs.”

      She