Free Sex Machine: A Standalone Contemporary Romance by Marie Force Page B

like that to me even though I’m technically his boss. But these are not normal circumstances, and tonight, for whatever reason, his words don’t roll off me the way they usually do.
    “Don’t worry about it.”
    “I will worry about it, and you should, too.”
    “I hear you, Matt, but there’s no need for threats. Honey and I are cool.”
    At least I hope we are. I’ll see to that later when I drop by to check on her. We’ll put things back on track, and that will be that. Whoever said sex has to change everything has never met me. I’m a machine. I don’t let my emotions into the equation. Ever.

Chapter Six
    I ’m a nervous wreck . I have been since that moment in Matt and Julie’s garage when Blake told me to leave my door unlocked. What could he possibly want? It couldn’t be more sex, because everyone knows he doesn’t do more than one night with any woman. Lauren was a rare exception, but that was when he was much younger. In recent years, his one-and-done philosophy has become well known around here.
    So that takes me back to the what-could-he-possibly-want question.
    I get home around eleven thirty. Blake was still at the party when I left, so I have no idea when to expect him. I go to the back door and stare at the lock for a long moment before I turn the knob to unlock it. The popping sound of the lock disengaging is louder than it has ever been, echoing through my quiet house like a shotgun blast.
    Okay, that might be a little dramatic, but everything about this situation feels dramatic to me. Not that I have a lot of experience with drama when it comes to men. They’re never much of a mystery to me, and I don’t get close enough to any of them to care about what they do.
    So why do I care so much about why Blake wants to see me tonight?
    Leaving the door unlocked, I walk—or rather limp—into my bedroom and change into a tank top and pajama pants. The bath helped with the aches and pains, but my body is still feeling the aftereffects of my crazy night with Blake. I stop short between my bedroom and the bathroom when the telltale tingling between my legs indicates that, while I might be confused about what he wants, my body knows exactly what it wants.
    “No way,” I say out loud, as if that might toughen my resolve. “No matter what he’s got on his mind, there’s no way that’s happening again. I’ll never walk again if he touches me tonight.”
    Today has reminded me all too much of what I felt like after the first time I had sex, with Randy Dade behind his father’s barn the summer before my junior year of high school. He went at me like a battering ram, and I was sore for days afterward. I had to tell my Gran that I fell while getting off my horse to explain why I couldn’t walk right. I’m not sure if she believed me, but I never had sex with Randy again, much to his dismay.
    I didn’t have sex again for two years after that traumatizing incident, and the next time wasn’t so bad. Neither was the time after that. But it was never anything special until I did it with Blake. And of course, the one time it was something other than just okay, it had to be with the one guy who will never want anything more.
    “You knew the score going into that bar last night, Honey Carmichael,” I say to myself in the mirror. “Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, and don’t blow up one night into something more than it was. Just. Sex .”
    This is exactly what Lauren warned me against—going all soft in the middle over a man who’d never want softness from me or any other woman. It would do me good to remember that. I’ll see what he wants tonight and send him on his way, hoping I don’t see him again for a while, until I have time to tuck our encounter into a box in my mind and put it in the past where it belongs. I can do that. I have to do that.
    A few minutes later, the latch on the back door clicks when it opens, and my heart nearly bursts from the adrenaline and excitement and… Oh for