Pretty in Kink

Titania
Ladley

Tampa biker Diego Mansini is
tortured by his past—until the photo shop gives him the wrong pictures. His
heart and soul awaken at first sight of the stunning woman in bondage,
blindfolded, handcuffed, spread-eagled, getting off on sex toys. He has to have
her just like in the snapshots.

Straitlaced model Britt Malone
agrees to her friend’s kinky photo shoot for one reason—the BDSM magazine’s
fifty-thousand-dollar contest prize. But the hot shots go missing and emerge in
the magazine after she backs out on entering the contest. Her life spins out of
control as she searches for the culprit who stole the pictures.

At the same time, Diego captures
her eye and teaches Britt to walk on the naughty side of life. Soon she’s
entangled in his dark desires while her list of suspects grows. Diego is on her
hit list, but she’s so hooked on his delicious kink, she can’t untangle herself
from the irresistible bad boy.

Inside Scoop:
Contains saucy female-female foreplay.

A
Romantica®
contemporary erotic romance
from Ellora’s Cave

She should never have posed for that damn magazine bondage
contest.

Britt’s hand trembled. Her cell phone slipped in her sweaty
palm, but she somehow managed to pull her vehicle over on the shoulder of
Florida’s I-95 freeway during rush-hour traffic.

“No. You can’t be serious. You really lost them?” Britt
shrieked.

“Y-yes.” Her best friend had been crying. Lexi’s normally
animated voice sounded weak and nasally. Well, she’d not only be bawling when
Britt got a hold of her scrawny neck, she’d be clawing for air.

Why oh why hadn’t she pushed Lexi to use a digital camera?

“I-I don’t know what happened. I came in to work this
morning hours after we’d wrapped up last night’s photo shoot. Just like we’d
planned, I developed the pictures before my boss got in, put them in the packet
envelope you filled out and set it on the break table in the back. Wham. Next
thing I know, my counter gets slammed with customers. My photo-shop assistant
and I worked our asses off for two freaking hours solid. Then… They went
missing, just like I said. Oh crap, I’m going to be sick.”

“Wham” sounded about right. Britt gritted her teeth. She
would wham Lexi’s tush until she coughed up those photos.

Traffic whizzed by Britt’s window, making the car rock.
Horns blared and vehicles revved their engines, but she ignored them. All she
could see and hear was her up-and-coming modeling career swirling down the
toilet.

“
You’re
going to be sick? Lex, that’s me in those
kinky pictures. Me. I’m nearly naked. My butt, my boobs, my—oh god, Doris is
going to
kill
me. My career’s over. I’ll never get that runway modeling
job. I’m a has-been. I’m—god
damn
it, why did I ever let youuse
your old-fashioned film camera and take the film in to work?
Or
let you
talk me into posing for those pictures?”

“First off, I’ve explained this to you a gazillion times. I
like
using an ‘old-fashioned’ camera. In my opinion, old thirty-five millimeter
cameras take way more professional-looking pics than digital cameras do. And as
to your other question, it’s because the magazine’s grand prize is fifty
thousand dollars, remember? We could both use twenty-five grand.” The phone
shuffled. Some papers rustled, drawers slammed.

Britt pounded the heel of her hand against the steering
wheel. The setting sun wobbled as a wave of dizziness swept her vision. Her
pulse boomed in her ears, drowning out the traffic.

“Yeah? Well there’s no guarantee I’ll win, especially not
now. Not. Since. We. Don’t. Have. The. Pictures. To. Enter.”

“Wait, wait. Calm down. I’ll find them, I promise. Just give
me some time.” More thumps and scrapes sounded in the background, along with a
male voice from the drugstore overhead PA system announcing the Sunlight
Special on shampoo. “Besides, think about it. Your face isn’t showing in any of
them and I covered your crack and crotch and nipples in each shot too. Just
barely, anyway,” she mumbled.

Britt took a deep breath. Naughty visions of herself swam
around in her head. Strung up by leather and ropes. A gag in her mouth.
Blindfolded. Toys, whips, handcuffs, collars. Holy mother, she’d been nuts for
agreeing to all that…stuff.

She spoke through grinding teeth. “Yes, but do
you
remember my name, address and phone number are written on the envelope? Because
you insisted you could easily spot them among all the customers’ photos, so
they wouldn’t get mixed up.”

“Aw shit, you did. Forgot about that part.”

“Oh my god, Lex. If those snapshots end up in someone else’s
hands, my life is over. Done.” She slammed her head against the bucket-seat
headrest and stared at her pathetic reflection in the visor mirror. Ha-ha, she
sure didn’t look like a model. Tears glittered in her big green eyes. Black
mascara streaked down her pale cheeks. Her nose shone rosy and her chin
quivered.

Just another pretty face.
No doubt that’s how Doris
her snarky agent would put it in that trademark tone of hers when she found out
what Britt had done. She pressed a hand to her thumping heart. Shit. She might
even be in a contractual mess with her agent by attempting to earn money
without involving her. First right of refusal or something. Why didn’t she
think of that before letting that damn camera shutter click away?

“Great, just great. There goes that Victoria’s Secret runway
gig I was hoping to get. No big-name contracts or endorsements. Period.
Nothing. I’m done for. And to top that, Doris is so going to drop me. No, she’s
plain just going to
kill
me.”

Lexi sighed. “C’mon, you know that’s not true. You’re her
ticket to big bucks.”

Britt shoved the gearshift into drive and darted out into
traffic. A car veered out of her lane and laid on the horn. She glared at the
woman. “Then you must not know Doris the way I do. I’m one of many. She has
lots of other hopeful clients. Now hang up and get back to looking for that
packet. I’m on my way in to the drugstore. And when I get there, Lex, you
better have found them or I’m plain going to kill
you
.”

She punched the Disconnect button and winged her phone into
the floorboard. With her hands gripping the steering wheel until her knuckles
went white, she once again fantasized about choking the life from that damn
Lexi.

* * * * *

Diego Mansini slid the top photo out of the envelope. “What
in hell…”

He sucked in a sharp breath. Some long, curvy woman lay on
her side, her wrists bound with wide strips of studded leather. The slim arms
were drawn above her head, occluding the side of her face, and the silhouette
view of one breast swelled over the rim of a black leather corset. The dark
strap of a satin mask encircled her head and crossed over the golden sheen of
hair.

Diego snatched up the packet and flipped it over.
Britt
Malone.
The name had been scrawled in feminine script right along with her
address and phone number.

“Well son of a bitch, they got Mansini and Malone mixed up.”
He couldn’t help but chuckle.

He tossed aside the envelope and swallowed a dry lump in his
throat as his stare riveted back to the streaming mane spread over a bed of
bright-pink rose petals. He studied the gentle surge of hip, the long flow of
toned, tan legs, the tied ankles.

His pulse quickened. “Ah baby, that’s one lucky dude behind
that camera.”

He yanked out the rest of the stack and studied the next
picture. This one—
damn
. Blindfolded with her wrists secured and her hair
spilling away from her cheek and neck. Her lips were pursed as she sucked on a
cherry Tootsie Pop sucker. They were plump, exotic lips, the kind that made a
man think of sinking his tongue between them. Or better yet, his cock.

Diego groaned and rubbed his crotch to soothe the slow blaze
that simmered there. Really, he was a halfway decent man—emphasis being on
half. Yet he didn’t like denying that animal part of himself no woman had ever
been able to tame. He hadn’t been dubbed Hell’s Scoundrel by accident and he
was damn proud of his reputation in the Tampa-area biker community. His
hard-ass image kept the women on their toes, but more importantly, the men as
well. He’d earned every bit of envy from his male peers, and every speck of
scorn from the trail of broken hearts that had fallen by the wayside off his
beloved Harleys.

So of course in his fantasies, his shaft took the place of
that candy. And why not indulge? His blood ran redder than most men’s did. He
couldn’t see depriving himself of this unexpected little delicacy. Besides, it
wasn’t as if he’d asked for someone else’s pictures or stolen them. It’d all
been an innocent mistake.

And wow, what a mistake that drugstore kid had made when
he’d dug the packet out of the file drawer. Diego didn’t know if it’d been a
cruel turn of fate to be tortured by the wrong snapshots or if he’d hit the
jackpot. Still, he decided to enjoy the irony of it.

His gaze zipped back to the vixen in skimpy leather. He
propped his work boots on the desk and snorted. Yeah. Now that he already had
them in his hands, it was too damn late to
not
look at the photos. He’d
already been bewitched by the blonde chick from the first second he’d laid eyes
on her. He took a drag off his cigarette, blew a few smoke rings then followed
with a long swig of beer. Anticipation fluttered through his chest. He let the
fizz of the cold drink slide down his throat and shuffled to the next snapshot.

A low whistle vibrated over his tongue. “Well, will you look
at that?”

This time she straddled a chair and faced the back rungs the
way cowboys in a saloon did in the old movies he enjoyed. Her wrists were
handcuffed to the back of the seat with gleaming silver, and an overhead
spotlight angled across her smooth skin. In this seductive position with her
head bent forward and turned to the side, her long hair cascaded over her cheek
and dangled down between her legs. The jewel he hungered to see had been
shadowed and positioned just out of view. It made him want more. It prompted
him to dig into the pile of prints until she gave him the one thing his mind,
body and cock now demanded.

That pretty pussy.

Diego released a strained breath, shifted in the desk chair.
His jeans tightened over his growing erection and heavy throbbing plagued his
groin and made his balls tighten. He slid his gaze up to the bend just above
where her leg joined her left hip. Right there in the paler strip of her bikini
line perched a heart-shaped, dark-brown mole. Something about the birthmark,
along with the submissive, almost sad slump of her shoulders, made his arms
ache to hold her. He flexed his finger and could almost imagine what the raised
mark would feel like beneath his touch.

Smooth. Warm. Silky.

His.

A territorial urge swept him. Diego shook his head and
forced his thoughts back to the superficial emotions—the more comfortable ones.
“I gotta admit, with all that stunning beauty, sweetheart, the imperfection of
the mole suits you.”

He took one last drag off the cigarette, smashed out the
butt in a nearby ashtray then rose and sauntered into the living room. His
stare never left her image until he reached his massive entertainment system.
He pulled his gaze away and fiddled with the knobs, set one of his favorite
classics, Bob Seger, to blaring.

He looked back at her as if to continue the conversation.
“Suits me too, for damn sure.”

Diego plunked his beer onto the coffee table, sank into the
brown leather sofa and turned to the next picture as he hummed along to the
raspy rock-and-roll voice.

“Son of a bitch.” He groaned as Bob reminisced about night
moves and a beautiful loser.

She’d been secured spread-eagle to all four posts of a brass
bed. The shot’d been taken from an aerial view so that he got the sense of a
Dom looking down on his sex slave’s almost-nude backside. He gulped and studied
the outstretched, lean limbs, the head turned to one side with a gag in the
mouth, the way her hair once again concealed most of her face.

And Hell’s Angels help him, except for a strip of pink satin
draped along the crevice of her ass, the rest of her had been left bare and
vulnerable. The right breast swelled out from beneath her, the nipple hidden
somewhere just beyond that overflow of sexy flesh.

“Beautiful. You’re the most beautiful fucking thing I’ve
ever seen.” Diego raked a hand through his hair. He imagined trailing his
tongue along the side of her breast in search of a puckered nipple, or up the
indentation of that delicate spine. The sensation would be maddening and so
erotic.

Warm, velvety, yielding, so sweet.

“I…damn, wish I could meet you.”

He shuffled through the shots faster, eager for every angle
of her, hungry to see her face, her eyes. What color would they be? Deep brown?
Dazzling blue? Would they be sad, happy or as alluring as the rest of her? He
moved to the next and the next, determined to find his answers, but he had the
most alarming sense that he never would get his fill of her. She remained just
as mystifying in the next image as she had in the first.

And he wanted her more now than he had just minutes ago.

He let out a sardonic splutter.
You prick. Get a hold of
yourself.

The last few photos included various sex tools. A flogger, a
paddle, a slave collar, vibrators and a chastity belt. In each one she seemed
to accept her sexual plight, yet she used that same trait to dominate the
viewer instead of giving in to subservience. The subtle contradiction and
underlying power she exuded made his loins ache more intensely. Between the
erect nipples straining against thin fabric, glimpses of moist inner thighs and
the pursed mouth in the throes of ecstasy, he’d been pushed to his limit.

He shot to his feet. Sweat beaded across his brow. “Son of a
bitch. You gotta take them back to the store.”

Diego crossed to the den and retrieved the envelope from his
desk. He ignored the uncomfortable tightness of denim stretched over his full
hard-on. If only a digital camera had been used instead of this outdated film
processing, he wouldn’t be in this unnerving position. His hands trembled as he
struggled to slide the snapshots back into the packet. He snatched up his keys
and marched toward the door.

But with his hand on the knob, he halted his steps. “Wait a
minute.”

What if they were nonconsensual shots? Smut or some shit
like that. Had she been forced to pose in bondage? Could this be evidence of an
illegal sex ring or someone who’d been kidnapped? A stab of rage ripped through
his gut mixed with guilt and nausea at having lusted over her. His gaze zipped
down to the photo packet as if it were a magnet to steel. He made a face. Nah.
Farfetched. Most likely the pretty feminine writing was hers. Besides, who’d be
stupid enough to take evidence like that to be developed at a local drugstore?