Pretty in Kink

by Titania Ladley

  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

  Pretty in Kink

  Titania Ladley

  Chapter One

  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—goddamn 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 wa
s 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?

  But still, you never knew. Criminals had been known to make idiotic mistakes. He envisioned her held prisoner in some shitty hellhole, being coerced into posing against her will and some fuckhead snapping photos of her for an underground smut website, forcing himself on her.

  Protectiveness reared up, causing his hands to shake with fury. “I’ll kill the bastard. If he laid one finger on you, I’ll kill him.”

  He stared at the envelope. All her private information swam around in his vision, her address, her phone number—or at least someone named Britt Malone. The person in the photos wasn’t necessarily the person on the envelope. He hoped to hell she’d consented to this kinkiness and this was her handwriting. If so, that presented a whole different ballgame. Shit, he’d had women in these same positions himself—tied up, spanked, flogged, handcuffed, even on a party platform orgasming over and over, screaming for more in front of hundreds of bikers. Yeah, those parties got damn rowdy.

  But the difference? It was consensual, and he certainly hadn’t kidnapped anyone and held them against their will. All the women he hung out with were game as hell and begged for it all in good fun.

  “Make up your fuckin’ mind, man.”

  Seconds ticked into minutes as he s
tood in the doorway and jingled his keys. He studied the pretty strokes of ink on the envelope and considered his options. He didn’t need her phone number or address to uncover more about her, or to check up and make sure things were on the up-and-up.

  He had his connections. A name would do the trick, even if the name and the photo subject weren’t the same person. His friends could be persuasive if it came down to a need for it. They’d find out what was what and who was who.

  He could return them to the store and never look back. Of course, that or tossing them in the trash is what even Scoundrel would’ve normally done out of sheer aggravation at being given the wrong packet—if it had been anyone but her in the pictures.

  But it was her.

  Yet he wasn’t in the market for a relationship at this point in his life either. A one-night stand with her, oh yeah, bring it on, kink and all. But a long-term relationship? Uh-uh. He couldn’t afford to get tangled up in all that pain and emotion again. Divorce had put a sour taste in his mouth and things were still volatile enough with Carolyn. Besides, he already had his no-strings pick of women in the large circle of friends he ran with. Snap his fingers when he desired a warm body in his bed, or spend the night in solitary peace, depending on his mood.

  He shrugged. Just a fact. Always his choice. Always. Now was no different. So why complicate things?

  Did he want to get involved and do some snooping? Really? Hell no. He wanted to get his pictures from the store and move on.

  The ones they should have given him in the first fucking place.

  He’d head to the store right now, drop her pictures off and get his—Carolyn’s actually, who’d asked him to pick them up for her.

  So he’d do what was best.

  He started to turn, stopped, clinked the keys against his thigh.

  Or he could take them to her. The address was a small beachside town not far north of Tampa called Palmetto Cove. That would cover two bases at once—a check to make sure she wasn’t a victim of some monster, and it would satisfy his curiosity and allow him to meet her in person.