The First Time (Love in No Time #1) by Bitsi Shar Read Free Book Online Page B

late at all. If you have to take an auto to get here on time, do so. No buses please. I can pay the fare for you, ok?” Again, I mumble a yes. I am seriously lacking in words at this point.
    “Okay then, I’ll see you there. Looking forward to it so much, honey. In fact I have been thinking about this evening all morning and now afternoon.”
    There is a smile in his voice. I am silent. Yes, seriously lacking in words. I hear a click and he is gone. I rub my arms. There are goose bumps everywhere. I have it bad and nothing has actually happened yet.
    Is it he or is it me? Is he good at seducing women or am I good at being seduced by the right words? I don’t know of any “boys” his age who are good at anything like this. They don’t know how. They have no training. Where is he getting his training? Practice makes perfect.
    Has he been practicing? Good god, with whom? Someone I know? God, that would suck like big time. Of course, no pun intended.
    Or is he practicing his skills first on me so he could hone them before going to that other one who he loves madly?
    Is he really a wannabe playboy who has found in my innocent flirting aboard a scooter his playground for some serious playing practice?
    Is he really cutting his playboy teeth on my tremulous, goose bumpy skin because he can and he dares? (Teeth on my skin, hmmm! The thought is delicious and scary at the same time).
    I know what his intentions are—to seduce me—but what after? Is he taking the playing to another level? I really need to know from him what is that level and what that entails for me. I am determined and brave.
    Now I am looking forward to dinner in a different way—not in a breathless-I-don’t-know-what’s-happening-to-me-way-but-I-am-breathless-and-I-want-to-know-what-the-deal-is-friend-kind-of-way. And with that thought I walk to my desk, pick up my bag and head out the door. The date now promised to be so much more, I knew.

Chapter Nine
     
    My auto guy is sedate this time maybe because I am not in tearing hurry. The sun is cooling off just that little bit and the hot hundred degrees has dropped to a cooler ninety. This feels pleasant even though the sweat remains like a sticky film on the epidermis. The breezy whiplash creates an illusion of a cooling affect.
    I glance at my watch. Another twenty minutes before we arrive at Berccos and that alone keeps my heart steady. I am not ready for the next level of blood pumping and emotional angst that follows in its wake. I close my eyes letting my heart dip into another nether gear, treating myself to another degree of lower calm. I open my eyes as we are rounding the corner to Berccos. The auto guy begins looking for a spot near the sidewalk where he could park to let me off. And as luck would have it, a scooter backs out of the space we were slowly approaching. We squeeze in and he stops. I pay him and hop off.
    Now I need some orientation. Where exactly is Berccos? Should I go left of the Leather Emporium or right towards Palika Bazaar? I go left guided by some uncanny directional sense. In five minutes I am standing before the best Indian-Chinese restaurant in North Delhi.
    I am good. I know.
    My mother used to tell fables of my sense of direction, even as a child. My father would often test my directional astuteness by first promising to drive us to our grandmother’s place in Kamla Nagar but then taking a rather circuitous route that would lead us home instead. I knew what he was up to every single time. And every single time I protested telling him to follow the “right” path. I would then feed him every turn and U-turn to my grandmother’s house. And upon reaching, give him an emphatic nod as if to say “duh.”
    I smiled at the memory as I push open Berccos’ gold and black heavy wood door, stepping into its air-conditioned interior. Even as my heated body welcomed the cool, my insides turn molten. My heart banged into my chest like I had just subjected it to a mile dash. He sat