Page 25 of A Reclusive Heart

A lot of sex.

“Nick!”

He looked up from his computer and nearly groaned. A half-hour ago, he’d realized that someone fucked up and double-booked them next week and he’d been trying to figure out how to fix it. He just came up with a solution that would work for everyone, meaning him, when the banging started.

Shouldn’t she be working? Nick wondered as he pulled on a pair of jeans. Then again, she probably had another question about her computer. Granted, he thought he’d covered everything during the two hours they’d spent setting up her new computer, but maybe he’d missed something.

“Nick!”

“What?” he snapped as he opened the hotel door to find his little recluse hugging her laptop tightly against her chest and looking close to tears.

“I broke my computer.”

“Did you drop it?” Nick asked, already taking the computer from her to inspect it.

“No,” she muttered, sounding absolutely fucking miserable.

He threw her a curious look as he took her computer over to the couch and placed it on the coffee table. He opened the lid and felt his eyebrows jump as pop-up window after pop-up window featuring sex in various acts kept popping up on the screen.

“What the hell did you do?” Nick asked, already having a pretty good idea that she’d downloaded a virus.

“Research,” she mumbled pathetically.

“What?” Nick asked absently as he did his best to stop the attack.

She mumbled something that he didn’t quite understand. “What was that?” he asked as he ran the anti-malware program he’d installed only hours ago.

“I said I was watching sex for research,” Jamie said, shocking the hell out of him.

“You were watching porn? What the hell kind of research requires you to watch porn?” Nick demanded as he stood up and walked over to his computer, half afraid that she did something to his computer.

“That’s personal,” Jamie said, trying to sound firm, but the woman just didn’t have a clue how to pull it off.

He ran the malware scanning program on his computer and was just about to go recheck her computer when a thought occurred to him. This morning, he’d spotted an odd file in her folder. At the time, he hadn’t thought much of it, but now…

He clicked the file open and received his second shock of the night as he quickly read through the list.

“What are you doing?” Jamie demanded, sounding nervous and for damn good reason.

Holy shit, was she serious? He read the list again as dread shot through him. Yes, she was. She’d made a list, started to do the items and was curious. He’d bet everything he had that brown bag she’d grabbed this morning hadn’t been tampons. His damn recluse bought condoms and was now watching porn.

She wanted to try new things. Hell, he’d encouraged her to try new things so that he had something to hold over her head, and now, it seemed as though she’d taken it one step further. His little recluse was getting ready to start a little sex revolution.

For a moment, Nick wondered how she’d planned on approaching him about helping her out with this, but then realized that she hadn’t planned on approaching him at all. She didn’t want his help. For everything else, he was fine, but he wasn’t good enough for this. No, for this his little recluse planned on approaching a strange man and trusted him not to hurt her.

He glared up at her as she shifted nervously in front of her computer as she wrung her hands together. Although she was a sexy little thing now and he wouldn’t have minded a go betweenher legs, he’d decided that she was off limits. He also had a firm rule about touching virgins, he didn’t.

Virgins were too much work, too much drama, and he didn’t care enough to introduce them to sex patiently. When he had sex, he wanted to get off. He didn’t really care about anything else and he sure as hell didn’t care about making things perfect for a woman. He got them off and that was enough in his book. It was the reason he’d decided not to act on his attraction to the little recluse, but damn...

She really didn’t want him. She wanted a stranger and that was not the reason why he surged to his feet and suddenly found himself glaring down at her. It wasn’t. He was concerned for her because she was doing something incredibly fucking stupid.

That was all.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Nick snapped, grabbing her by her arms. “Do you have any idea what could happen to you by going around and letting some strange guy fuck you?”

She winced, from his crude words or the way he snapped at her, he didn’t care. Didn’t she realize that she could catch something? Get pregnant? Or worse, go home with some asshole that got his thrills by beating the shit out of women? Didn’t she realize how stupid this was?

“Th-that’s why I was doing research, you jerk!” Jamie snapped back, surprising them both. “I don’t know anything about sex and I have no one that I can ask!” she said, getting good and mad as she pulled her arms back only to give him a good shove.

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