In the spring, a woman’s fancy turns to a new lover. And what lover could be more new than a just-created robot, built especially for the purpose of pleasure?

My latest book, MAN OR MACHINE, is an erotic science fiction romantic comedy. Here’s a blurb:

Geek-girl Ilsa Morgenstern has had enough heartbreak to last a lifetime, so she builds Dallas—a smart, sexy male robot—to keep her satisfied without requiring any pesky emotions. She’s not expecting Hal, her computer genius ex-boyfriend, to break into her home in an attempt to steal her family’s tech secrets. And she’s certainly not expecting that Dallas will want Hal and Ilsa to increase his knowledge of human sexuality by having sex with him—both separately and together.

As the robot/human encounters get closer—and even hotter—Ilsa’s feelings for Hal threaten to resurface. She’s determined to avoid heartbreak again, but sometimes a girl has to accept that the man—er, robot—you think you want is only seventy-four percent of the man you need.

Inside Scoop: This book contains male-male action, a male-female-male threesome and a robot who learned his speech patterns from watching internet porn. Yeah, baby.

Buy MAN OR MACHINE on Amazon – Barnes and Noble – Ellora’s Cave – Sony – All Romance eBooks

An excerpt from MAN OR MACHINE:

Wednesday, 4:23 pm, Not as Far in the Future as You Might Think

“Okay,” said Ilsa. “Commencing robot sex attempt, take one.”

She looked at the robot. The robot looked at her. At least she thought it was looking at her. She’d programmed it to.

Not it, she reminded herself. Him.

“Are you ready?” she asked it. Him. “Do you…want to have sex with me?”

“Oh yeah, baby.” It was quite a pleasant voice, rugged and manly, with a slight drawl. “Bring it on.”

He was six feet tall, with a carbon fiber skeleton surrounded by wires and artificial tendons. She’d installed artificial skin over his torso, arms and hands, making sure it was sensitive to stimulation—heat, wetness and touch. She’d wired in an erect penis, seven-and-a-half-inches long, with its sensors connected to the neural processors in the robot’s brain. The same one that included the chatbot she’d been refining and conversation-training for the past three months. Physically, he was a perfect specimen and according to her calculations, he should be at full functionality.

His face was handsome, with a strong jaw, straight nose, a full mouth, high cheekbones and eyes that glowed warm orange. After careful consideration, she’d made him the same color as her second favorite ice cream: maple pecan. Her favorite ice cream was Neopolitan but she didn’t think stripes were very sexy. Of course, she could always change the color of his skin if she wanted to.

She could change whatever she liked, or whatever he liked. That was the entire point.

“Right. Taking off my clothes now.” She toyed with the top button of her shirt and bit her lip.

“Come on, baby,” said the robot, “let me see that sweet body of yours. I can’t wait.”

Ilsa glanced around the room. Maybe she felt a little bit self-conscious because this was the first time she’d brought the robot out of the workshop and here to her bedroom. The house robots were always in and out of her quarters, to do their duties or to discuss their maintenance. But this robot hadn’t ventured out of the workshop before. And of course she’d never had sex with any of the housies.

She took a deep breath and braced herself. “Maybe…maybe you’d like to take my clothes off for me.”

“Would I ever.” The robot stepped forward. He moved with easy grace and his joints were noiseless. She’d made him well. From a distance, it would be almost impossible to distinguish him from a bald, naked human. As long as you couldn’t see his glowing eyes. Gently, he grasped the bottom hem of her shirt and lifted it over her head. He tossed it aside onto the floor.

She wouldn’t have done it that way; she’d have unbuttoned it first. “You’re making your own decisions.”

“Isn’t that the way you want it, baby?” He unfastened her jeans and slid them down her hips. When he bent to take them off her, she could see the muscles playing underneath the skin of his back. “Muscles” and “skin” being euphemisms, obviously: it was mostly wires and polymer.

She closed her eyes. Stop it, Ilsa. Stop thinking about this creation as a machine. It isn’t turning you on.

But hadn’t she built this robot for exactly that reason? To be a robot, and to turn her on?

Because men were too complicated, too messy. They came with too many emotions, too many risks. A lover who was a machine made perfect sense for her.

***

You can win an e-copy of MAN OR MACHINE by leaving a comment below. You don’t have to say anything in particular—I’ll choose the winner at random by midnight GMT on 2 May—but purely out of curiosity, I’d love to know this: if you had a brand-new hunky robot, what special attachments would you add?

(Personally, I’d add a chocolate fountain. You can never have too many chocolate fountains.)

ES x

• About the Author
• Posts in the Past

Electra Shepherd

Electra Shepherd is the pseudonym for a best-selling, award-winning author. She enjoys travel, reading and extreme Lego. She writes erotic science fiction romantic comedy about humans and robots.

www.electrashepherd.com

• A spring fling...with a robot?