Boy Meets Geek by Arielle Archer Read Free Book Online Page A

definitely wasn’t very flattering making the hand symbol of the Bendai sisterhood which figured largely in the books. The juxtaposition between that very serious hand signal and the weird look on my face wouldn’t be lost on him, but I looked absolutely ridiculous.
    I couldn’t send him an email right now. I couldn’t send an email when he’d see that picture of me!
    I alt tabbed back into the game fully intending to make an excuse.
    “I’m waiting…”
    There he was again with that infuriating casually insistent confidence. As though he expected me to send him my manuscript right now. And I found myself blushing, moving out of the game client again, and hitting send. It was as though I was under some sort of spell. It was as though he was able to get me to do whatever he wanted. I didn’t even realize what I was doing until I’d sent it, and immediately my hand went from my mouse up to my mouth. I stared in wide-eyed shock.
    Damn it!
    I moved back to the game. I waited to see what the damage was.
    “Got it.” he said.
    There was a pause. A pause that stretched into an eternity. A pause where I was sure he was looking at my picture, where he was sizing me up, where he was realizing that the sexy seductive elf priestess was nothing like the girl in my profile picture. He was probably looking me up and down and thinking how ridiculous he’d been to ever pay any attention to me. I’m sure he’d come back and say that he didn’t have time to read my manuscript. I’m sure the only reason he was interested in the first place was because I was a chick in a videogame and he was trying to butter me up or something. It had happened before.
    “My my,” he said, adding a smiley face to the end. “You are a cutie my lady elf.”
    Damn it. This guy kept blowing my expectations away! I blushed again. I blushed! And I felt a tingle at the tips of my fingers that I was pretty sure was from getting turned on and not an impending stroke as I started typing.
    “You’re not so bad yourself.” I said with a wink emoticon.
    Was I really doing this? Was I really flirting with a guy over the Internet on the basis of a picture? This was ridiculous! I hadn’t done this thing in at least five or six years. Not since I was a teenager using the Internet for the first time. Not since I’d first got involved in non-Elassa role-playing communities that were best forgotten all these years later.
    And yet here I was, very much feeling like the giddy schoolgirl I’d been back then talking to a cute guy. Only now I had actual proof that he was a cute guy. At least I hoped he was a cute guy. I wasn’t completely naïve. I knew there was still a good eighty percent chance that picture was bullshit, but a girl could dream right?
    “That’s all?”
    I blinked. Was he expecting more? Was he really that cocky? Did he really need me to validate his looks? I have to admit that it took some of the shine off of the moment.
    “Was there supposed to be more?”
    “No, nothing…”
    He seemed surprised. He seemed to be avoiding telling me something. And yet I’d just met him. I was still so surprised that he looked like that, I was still so surprised that he was the complete package, that I decided I wasn’t going to dig any deeper. Not yet. If he wanted to have his little mystery then let him have his little mystery. It was enough that we had what we had for now.
    “Think I’m going to log off and have a read of your story,” he said. “Talk to you later?”
    “Sure. Looking forward to it!”
    “Me too.” And he winked at me.
    It was amazing how punctuation could make me feel so amazing. It was really just a semicolon and a closed parenthesis, and yet that simple bit of punctuation was getting me worked up in a way that I hadn’t been in quite some time. Since the last guy I dated seriously, which had been a while ago since I didn’t really have time for dating what with my busy schedule. At least what with what I told myself was