A Reclusive Heart (Hollywood Hearts 2)

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“Nick!”

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

Shouldn’t she be off working? he 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 spent setting her new computer up, but maybe he missed something.

“Nick!” she yelled again.

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

“I broke my computer.”

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

“No,” she muttered, sounding 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?” he asked, already having a pretty good idea that she’d downloaded a virus.

“Research,” she mumbled pathetically.

“What?” he 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 opened and ran the anti-malware program he’d installed only hours ago.

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

“You were watching  p**n ?” he snapped. “What the hell kind of research requires you to watch  p**n ?” he demanded as he stood up and walked over to his computer, half afraid that she’d done something to his computer.

“That’s personal,” she 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 spotted a peculiar file in her folder and at the time hadn’t thought much about it, but now he did. 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 asked, sounding nervous and for good reason.

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

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 taken it one step further. His little recluse was getting ready to start a little sex revolution.

For a moment he wondered how she 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 trusting him not to hurt.

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 between her 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 main reason he decided not to act on his attraction to the little recluse even though he thought she was developing a bit of a crush on him and he knew he could have had her on her back within seconds if he wanted, 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 stupid. That was all.

“Are you out of your f**king mind?” he snapped, grabbing her by her arms and giving her a rough shake. “Do you have any idea what could happen to you by going around and letting some guy f**k you?”

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

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

“I’m sick of not knowing! I want to have sex! I want to know what it feels like to be with a man and if I want to have sex with a thousand men then that’s my business, buddy!” she said, giving him a good shove. “And if you don’t like it then……then……then that’s too darn bad!” she said, giving him a final shove that knocked him back onto his ass on the edge of the bed.

She turned to grab her computer and storm off when he found himself saying something he knew he’d regret. “I’ll teach you.”

Chapter 11

Was it possible to die from mortification? Jamie was pretty sure she was about to find out. Did he just offer her sympathy sex? Admittedly she didn’t know much about sex, but she didn’t think she wanted some guy ha**ng s*x with her because he felt bad for her.

She wanted what the heroines in her books got from their men, blinding passion and desire. She wanted a man who couldn’t keep his hands off of her, not a man who was willing to take one for the team.

“Um,” she cleared her throat uncomfortably, “no thanks. I’ll just stick to videos and books.”

His eyes narrowed on her as he got to his feet. “I meant,” he bit out tightly, “that I’d help you, not that I would sleep with you, Jamie.”