Dazzled by Jennifer Schmidlin

Story: 8
Presentation: 8
Total: 16
Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
Contemporary
To Purchase

Blurb: Jewels of the Night Series


Magic? Death by fornication?

Josie Melbourne is not a superstitious woman, but when she is given a blue, heart-shaped hunk of glass from an eighty-two-year-old woman, her life drastically changes. Is it coincidental that moments after she receives the gift, she seduces the elderly woman's son? And in a bathroom of all places?

Travis Bramble has loved Josie for months, but she barely tolerates his presence. A prudish deameanor often accompanied her to the rest home during visiting hours, but the evening she rubs her cute little behind against his groin, things begin changing…for his benefit.
Review: Story opens with Josie visiting her mother and her roommate, Gerty, in a retirement home. Josie thinks Gerty's son is a snobbish, egoist who is self-centered, but probably not a criminal. Travis is 6 feet, with sexy good looks, who thinks Josie is a prude but nice looking.

Gerty is a very superstitious 82 year old who tells Josie there are 3 men lurking around who want to take her gem and men should never have possession of it or they would "fornicate themselves to death." She wants Josie to take the heart shaped, blue, glass looking, object because she doesn't want Travis to have it and have bad things happen to him.

Gerty puts the stone in Josie's pocket and the first time she and Travis see each other in the old ladies' room Josie and Travis can't keep their hands off each other. They had not liked each other before, but now they are, as Josie put it, "denim fucking". I had never heard this term before, but what do I know?

From then on, things get very active. Josie gets stuck in a snowstorm; they go to mutual friends' home. There the 3 men appear. There are break-ins, kidnappings, yes as in more than one kidnapping, wild escapes, beatings, harassing old Gerty, involvement by Travis's Aunt Mabel and his cousins, and lots of HOT sex scenes involving Josie and Travis. Like the one where she sprawls on the couch and throws one leg over the back of it or the scene where they are interrupted and when she goes to answer the door she turns to face him and fingers herself.

For a couple who couldn't stand each other for ten months, these two really get it on in such a hurry they don't even take time to use precautions.