Free Blushing Violet by Blushing Violet [EC Exotica] (mobi) Page A

at her. Even though he knew her well enough to be used to her vocal freak-outs, he certainly didn’t need to hear about her personal hygiene.
    “Barney?” Jason asked and shut the jewelry box, tugging it away from Bethany and handing it to Violet. She took the jewelry and felt a sharp pang of guilt. What kind of woman was she that she accepted jewelry from one man that she had just had sex with before going out on a date with another man? True, Bethany was always telling her that sex didn’t equal love, and commitment took two people, but she couldn’t help hearing the mental voice of her mother chastising her for being a slut.
    Bethany laughed and clapped her hands together, snapping her out of her morose thoughts. “I’m so excited for you!” Catching Violet’s look of panic she rolled her eyes and wrapped Violet’s hands around the jewelry box. “Go get your bag out of your car and bring it back in here. I’ll help you get dolled up, and you can go meet mystery man number two. Have a great time and don’t forget to call me when you get home. After my dating dry spell, your nights out have become the highlight of my life.”
    “That is so sad on so many levels.”
    “Tell me about it.” Bethany’s brown eyes sparkled as she herded Violet out the door and handed her her purse and keys. It never failed to astonish her how Bethany could move faster than the speed of light and get you to do what she wanted by sheer force of will.
    Shaking her head, Violet headed out into the fading afternoon light and smiled.
    * * * * *
     
    Violet stood frozen in the middle of the crowded mall and became a rock, which the stream of people flowed around. In all of her most wild imagining she had never, ever predicted that Barney was one of her most naughty fantasies come to life.
    Literally.
    With his shoulder-length blond hair pulled back into a black leather thong, he looked like a Viking in a thousand-dollar pearl-gray suit. It had to be custom made, nothing else would have fit his big body so well. Especially that thick neck and those impossibly broad shoulders. He leaned against the edge of a fountain displaying a massive marble ball seemingly rotating on its own axis like a planet.
    A very fitting backdrop for a man who had the magnetic draw of the sun. Women hovered around him, shooting admiring glances and blatant come-hither looks his way. He ignored them all and scanned the crowd.
    She quickly ducked behind a stand selling sunglasses and wiped her sweating palms on her brown suede skirt. It wasn’t the fact that he was devastatingly handsome that was causing her panic attack. She knew him. Knew every inch of that perfect profile, but this was the first time she had seen it in anything but black and white.
    Barney was one of the men from the BDSM photography book that she had listed on her profile. She was used to seeing him frozen in time, giving the woman on her feet before him a look of such dominance that it never failed to make her panties wet. She knew how good he looked with his shirt off, in a pair of black leather pants with that thick blond hair falling loose over his neck.
    She had to get out of here right now. The humiliation of seeing his disappointment at the sight of her shriveled her stomach into a tight ball of misery. Dressed in her best skirt and cream angora sweater she had felt pretty when she left the spa. Now she felt fat, frumpy and hopelessly outclassed.
    “Violet?” a deep voice rumbled from behind her and she jumped, scattering a bunch of sunglasses to the floor with a plastic clatter.
    Her worst fears came true as she turned around and found Barney smiling at her. “That’s me,” she said in a squeak before dropping to her feet and picking up the sunglasses. When she looked up she found him beaming down at her and was reminded that they mirrored the position in the BDSM book. Heat seared through her veins and she gathered the sunglasses with shaking hands.
    “I didn’t mean to scare