Pretty in Kink (10 page)

To be eager enough to obey and submit.

He released her and opened the door, but he turned back on a
whim. “Britt?”

“Hmm?”

“Your safe word is very sexy. I’ll be dreaming of you all
night long wrapped in pink lingerie. Or just your smooth, pink skin would do.”

The corners of her mouth curved up. “I… I’d like another
chance to use it—the safe word.”

His heart stumbled, took a dive. “You bet.”

She smiled. It seemed to light up the room. “I need to
freshen up before you take me home. Is that okay?”

“Sure. I’ll just go out and get the bike set. I’m sure it’s
wet.”
Mmm, wet the way you were.
“I heard it raining earlier.”

Diego stepped out on the porch and closed the door behind
him. He started down the damp walk feeling as if he floated on air. The woman
had wormed her way into his blood. Into his heart. The scent of rain filled his
nostrils while the breezy air wrapped around him to cool his blood. He made it
to his bike, dug in the saddlebag for a dry rag and wiped down the windshield
and leather seat. He threw his leg over the bike and donned his helmet, peppy
and alive. To emphasize his mood, he started the engine and raced it in
neutral.

Just when he backed out of the spot to move closer to the
door, Lexi appeared at his left.

“What do you want from her?” She asked it over the drone of
the engine, as if she were in competition with it—or with him, rather.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” she snarled, her eyes narrowed. “What do you
want from Britt?”

“I don’t think that’s any of your business.” He revved some
more, never taking his stare from hers.

“Britt will always be my business. She’s my best friend and
I don’t want to see her get hurt.”

“Who said anything about hurting her?”

She tipped her little chin up and looked down her pert nose
at him. “Your type always hurts women.”

“My type? Do you really want to go there again, Lexi?”

She planted her fists on her hips. “I’ll ask you once more.
What do you want from her?”

He chuckled, but it came out with an echo of derision.
“Again, not your business.”

She squinted and leaned closer. He caught a whiff of floral
perfume mixed with the heat of anger. “You lied in the store. You looked at the
pictures, didn’t you?”

He should have seen that one coming. “Yes. But among others,
you sort of lied here too. You obviously got into my records and used my
address to your benefit. Britt is questioning it, you know, confused about how
you knew where to find her. You’re going to have to own up sooner or later. ”

“You prick.”

Diego shut off the bike, flipped down the kickstand with his
boot heel. “How in the hell does that make me a prick? I’m minding my own
business, pick up my pictures and I get home and pull them out of the envelope.
Someone else’s, not mine. So let’s recap here. Not counting getting my privacy
breached tonight,
your
store fucks up, and that makes
me
a
prick?”

“I saw you with her that night after you brought them back.”

“How about we emphasize that too?
I brought them back.
I could have kept them, thrown them up on the internet and earned a fortune. But
I didn’t.”

“You knew it was her in the pictures. You saw her enter the
store when you were leaving and you deliberately ‘ran’ into her. You
manipulated the whole incident to get a date with her.”

He shoved a hand through his damp hair. A soft rain misted
around them. “No. Pure coincidence.”

“Bull.”

“No bull. She’s a beautiful woman and I’m a free man.” He
lifted a shoulder. “How can you blame me for being interested in her once I did
meet her?”

“I’ll tell her.” Her voice dripped with loathing. “I’ll tell
her you looked at her private pictures and asked her on a date just so you
could see how many of those poses you could get her to reenact.”

He thought of Britt’s innocent response to his domination
and longed to confirm his suspicions. “Reenact? Oh yes, that reminds me. I have
a feeling the poses themselves were nothing but that—reenactments. Tell me,
Lexi… What’s this impatience of yours about a contest? Why were those pictures
taken, who took them and why did Britt trust you with such personal snapshots?”

“That is none of your fucking business. And like I said, I
will tell her. You just wait.”

Her deliberate threat got his own motor racing. Diego tamped
down the anger that tore through his system and threatened to spew. “You have a
way of bringing out the worst in people, don’t you? And since you do, I gotta
say, if you do tell her, then I’ll tell her that instead of the boy,
you’re
the one who was careless enough to hand them over to me.”

She gasped but didn’t reply.

“Yes, I thought that might get your attention. If you
recall, I came into your store as an innocent bystander earlier that day
picking up some pictures I’d had developed. The young man who works with you
had started to wait on me, but he had to step away. Is it ringing any bells
yet?” He paused but went on when her only response was to narrow those sherry
eyes on him again. Her face paled, but the eyes continued to spit orneriness.

“No? Okay, let me continue… In steps Lexi, the one who
actually bagged those wrong pictures up and rang them up on the register. The
one who should have paid more attention to the name on the envelope—your ‘best’
friend’s name. Don’t you remember me, Lexi? Don’t you recall sending Britt’s
pictures home with me—a drug-pushing, lowly, scheming hoodlum of ‘that’ type? Oh,
and let’s not forget that you, no doubt, developed them on the sly and then
violated a paying customer’s privacy tonight. Hm.” He stroked the whiskers on
his chin. “Maybe the store manager should know about all that too?”

“You asshole.”

“No, in general I’m not an asshole. But somehow I feel dirty
now. I feel just like a filthy asshole because of you and your manipulations
and carelessness. I’m just as much a victim of this lost-picture debacle as she
is.”

“I’ll get her to stop seeing you one way or another,” she
cautioned through clenched teeth. “You just wait.”

“Get in line behind everyone else Britt knows.” He turned
the key and brought the bike to roaring life again. Then he said one final
thing as he rolled the bike backward and angled it toward the sidewalk that led
to his front door. “Meanwhile, I’ll be waiting to see if I should inform both
Britt and your boss what sorts of things you’ve been doing behind their backs.”

He gave her one last sweeping touché look and took off in a
squall of tires on wet pavement across the driveway and up the long sidewalk.

By the time Sunday evening rolled around, she’d been waiting
two long days. Two days of rushing home to check her machine, calling her
voicemail over and over, fielding snide questions about him from Lexi. She knew
Lexi disliked him. Oh yes, that was very apparent. It saddened her, but it just
made her more determined to get to know him better so she could prove to her
that she was wrong. Sure, he rode a motorcycle, he got greasy all day, he had
that long hair and goatee and he drank beer, smoked cigarettes, had a bunch of
tattoos and wore leather.

The type Lexi used to date. She’d had her heart broken a
dozen times but continued to migrate toward “that type”.

But tattoos and motorcycles did not make him, or anyone for
that matter, a bad person.

Never mind the fact that Britt used to put men like him in
the same sinister category.

As the hours had worn into days, she worried and wondered if
Lexi had succeeded in chasing him off. Or maybe he was playing a game with her.
Maybe she should call him. Could he be waiting to see how long she would
continue to play the passive captive? Or could he be that busy of a man? No. He
probably waited just to test her, to see if she would give in and turn the
tables on him by becoming the domineering one.

She gasped. What if he didn’t approve of what he’d seen? It
was possible he’d decided after uncovering her tall, naked body, that she just
wasn’t his type. That she was too loose. It had been uncharacteristic of her to
give in to sex on the first date anyway. And though she was on the Pill, Britt
was mortified to admit to herself that he’d seduced her so thoroughly, she’d
neglected to have him use a condom.

Then there was all that foreplay with Michelle at the rally.

Her face heated at the memory of it. She shoved the car into
park and clamped her legs together, attempting to stave off the rush of heat at
the memory of soft skin and lips on her while Diego watched.

Then the way he’d taken control and tied her up at his
house…

Whew.

As she played it all back in her mind now her heart raced.
Sure, Lexi had seen to the ruining of the “mood”—Britt made a mental note to
interrogate Lexi again about how she’d known where to find her that night. But
despite the oddity of that, Britt had been prepared to give in to him further
after Lexi had left his house. Even now as she hauled bags in from the car, her
belly quickened deep in her loins and wetness trickled onto her panties as she
recalled the sensation of being at his mercy. She’d never done that kind of
thing before, the kinky, tie-me-up games.

Well, not with a man anyway. In those pictures, yes. And
wow, how disappointed Lexi had been when she’d called Britt later Friday
evening and Britt had admitted she’d destroyed the photos and the negatives.

She sighed as she unloaded cereal and canned goods into the
cabinets. Though she understood Lexi’s motivation for wanting to enter the
contest, she’d determined that she couldn’t risk her own career just to further
Lexi’s. True, Britt could use all that money too, but the chances of winning
were slim while the possibility of Doris or the general public finding out who
haunted those faceless pictures proved far greater. Better to leave her
finances and furthering her career to Doris than to try to capitalize on a
farfetched contest prize on her own.

But as far as Diego was concerned, she just didn’t know what
to do. Her nerves were already shot waiting for Doris to pull through with the
Victoria’s Secret deal. What had started out as a sure thing had turned into
something a bit more detailed and nitpicky. The message Doris had left on her
cell before she’d left with Diego for the rally Friday had all the details.
They wanted a shorter term, but Doris insisted on a longer one with several
out-clauses. In addition, they couldn’t come to an agreement on money, the one
thing Britt worried might lose the contract for her if Doris continued to push
for more.

But then that was nothing new. Doris always wanted more.

Britt figured she needed a diversion about right now, one
that didn’t include Doris or Lexi. With all the hours and days on end of
department-store catalog shoots, dressing, undressing, sizing to fit and
makeup, nail and hair sittings, she could use a bit of unwinding time. Last
week had been endless sessions of hand and foot shots, pedicures and manicures,
diamond rings on, tennis bracelets off, shoot and reshoot. Under all those hot
lights, the constant smiling, spinning,
snap
, flash, she’d almost lost
her mind. She groaned at the thought, knowing that behind the curtain wasn’t
quite as glamorous as those on the opposite side of the camera thought it could
be. It could get tiring and well, downright boring.

She wanted that needed distraction to be spent with Diego,
but she wasn’t quite sure what to do from here. She wondered if Lexi was right.
Perhaps he was wrong for her after all. If she characterized him the way Lexi
did, he’d be the perfect candidate to screw a woman over. Charismatic,
enthralling, arrogant and yet irresistible in a dark sort of way, while
thoroughly enjoying the power and control he wielded over a woman.

Yeah, maybe she’d fallen into his arms blind and dumb.

Britt paused, clutching a bunch of bananas against her
breasts. “Oh, but those sure were nice arms on that bod, Diego Mansini.”

The image of his naked, buff body filled her thoughts. Her
pulse quickened at the remembered sensation of his strong grip, the way he held
her down and forced her into submission. She could see him fit and tanned, all
those tattoos decorating the bulging muscles… God, what was wrong with her?
Diego was a total about-face from her usual lean type. But then she had nothing
or no one to show for it, now did she? Every relationship up to this point had
either fizzled out mutually, or ended in total drama-filled disaster. Yet she’d
met Diego just four days ago—had it really only been four?—and already, more
excitement and anticipation sparked inside her than she’d experienced in all
those months put together with the other men in her past.

A firm rap on the door brought her out of her musing. She
set the bananas in a basket on the countertop, folded the last grocery sack and
tucked it under the sink. Before she could step into the living room, another
knock sounded, this one more impatient.

“I’m coming,” she called out. When she reached the door, she
peered through the peephole. “Diego,” she whispered. Even though the glass in
the tiny hole distorted the image, she knew it had to be him by the height and
the casual stance. A rush of heat poured through her blood. She smoothed her
hair, blew on her hand to test her breath.

Oh lord, help her to calm her nerves.

Her hand trembled as she slid the chain aside and unbolted
the door.

“Hi.” The one-word, husky greeting settled in her ears and
incinerated what nerves she’d salvaged. She looked at him and knew a moment of
complete and utter female surrender. He stood with his arms folded, his hip
propped against the wooden handrail. “Well aren’t you going to invite me in?”

If she’d been able to formulate any sort of a response in
her mind, it wouldn’t have made it to her tongue. Nothing except the handsome
sight of him would register. Dumbstruck, she let her gaze travel over him. He
wore a black sleeveless Harley t-shirt, faded jeans and black leather boots.
The muscles in his sun-kissed arms flexed, making the inked sketches on his
biceps appear 3-D. He must have come straight from the shower, because his hair
flowed past his shoulders in thick, damp strands. The humid breeze blew in,
carrying with it the scent of deodorant soap and his unique musky aftershave.

Her gaze rose up the thick neck to the whiskered jaw. The
goatee had filled in more in the days since she’d last seen him. But his
chiseled cheeks and jaw were freshly shaven. Her hand itched to graze the
smooth skin, to cup the gorgeous face and pull him into a ravenous kiss. Yum.
That mouth with the full bottom lip curved into a smug grin. And his eyes
danced with humor, pleased, arrogant and sure.

“I…I’m sorry. Yes, please come in.” She stepped aside and
allowed him entry, her legs quivering as she moved.

He kept his gaze locked on hers and covered the distance in
two brisk strides. His aroma wrapped about her, seductive and beguiling, a
split second before his arms went around her. “Damn, you’re so gorgeous.”

The twinkle in his eyes coupled with his breathy words made
her mind go blank. Her tongue thick, she did her best to reply. “Uh, I’m just
in my cruddy shopping sweats. But thanks, you’re not too bad yourself.” She
forced herself not to sigh at the heat of his body surrounding her, holding her
captive.

His lips brushed hers as he spoke, his voice warm and thick
as honey. “Whatever you wear—or don’t, hopefully—is fine by me. Hey, I missed
you, doll.”

She gave in to the urge and at last slid her arms around his
waist. Solid strength came to mind as she embraced him. “Really? You could have
fooled me.”

“You’re cute when you pout.” He chuckled and nipped her
bottom lip. “Sorry, it’s been a busy weekend at the shop. Got slammed.
Besides,” he added, his voice lowering to a raspy tease, “it was good for you.”

“Good for me? What…” She groaned when he cruised a hand up
her hip and waist and closed it around her breast. Britt fought for air, forced
out her next words. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The waiting, the wondering, the anticipation. I bet you’re
creamier inside than a hot and gooey bonbon.” Through her thin, long-sleeved
shirt and the lace of her bra, he found her nipple, already hard and obedient
between his thick fingers. He pinched it, pulling until she let out a whimper.
A slow trail of fire blazed down through her belly and settled in her loins.
True, she was creamier than a hot, gooey bonbon.

Damn him.

But he hadn’t had time to drag her back down into the
no-turning-back stage of lust. As a result, she still had part of her faculties
about her, which in turn left her vulnerable to an awareness of mortification.
She didn’t have to look in a mirror to know her face had just turned the shade
of cotton candy.

Britt pulled away just out of reach and smoothed her hands
on the legs of her white sweatpants. “So, were you just passing through the
neighborhood, or what?”

He yanked her back into his arms. “Don’t be ridiculous.
Palmetto Cove is way out of my way. I came all the way up here for one good
reason, and one good reason only.”

She tipped her head and stared deep into his eyes. They
glittered almost murderously, determined. She knew it had to be somewhat of a
betrayal to women’s libbers, but she couldn’t deny that the way he took control
left her breathless and glowing inside. It made her
want
to submit, to
let him take her wherever his bad-boy mind and incredible body wanted to.

“And that would be?”

“You.” He dipped his head and gave her a quick, playful kiss
on the lips. “I have burgers patted out, the grill ready to fire up and a salad
tossed.”

At the mention of food she blinked, and it brought her out
of the dream stage into stark reality. He had perfect timing.

In more ways than one.

In this case, she was starving for food. It sounded
absolutely delicious. “You do? Where?”

“My place. Now fetch your purse and let’s go.” Diego twirled
her around to face the side table at the door where her purse sat. He followed
that sudden movement with a playful swat on the ass.

“Ow.” At first it made her gasp and she turned, rubbed the
offended cheek and glared at him. But it unburied latent and delayed sensations
in her, accelerated by the feral look in his eyes. The sting of it grew on her,
evolving from warmth into a hot fire that made her whole rear tingle. Britt was
somewhat astonished to realize she liked it and that it made that “gooey”
center he spoke of indeed melt into cream.

“You get off on it.” He pinched her chin, tipped her face up
and captured her stare with his. “Don’t you, Britt?”

She swallowed. “No, I—”

“Be honest.”

She stood there for a long moment, pondering how she should
answer such a question. Her stomach growled, reminding her she
was
hungry. She admitted she couldn’t wait to go back to his cozy house again, but
this time they’d do normal things. They’d eat dinner, watch TV, make out in
regular, boring ways. Maybe that would confirm Lexi’s assumptions of him, which
in turn would force her to let go of this strange obsession she had with this
dangerous man.

“I…it surprised me at first.”

“And then?”

“I-it felt good after the sting cooled down.” Did she really
just say that?

A muscle in his jaw twitched and his eyes glazed over. “Ah,
and on that promising note, I think we should be going.”

If it weren’t for his cheery words, she’d have sworn the
thinning of his lips and the tenseness of his body had meant anger or some sort
of volatile emotion she couldn’t quite pin down. He drew in a long breath, as
if only a thin thread kept him from losing control.

“C’mon, beautiful.” He held out his hand and she took it as
she snatched up her purse. His fingers closed around hers, possessive, secure.
Why was it everything the man did made her stomach flutter and her pulse pound?

And kept her pussy in a constant state of wetness.

He led her down the walk and to the parking lot. The orange
ball of the setting sun peeped below a distant line of gray haze. The clouds
flickered and faraway thunder rumbled. Palm trees lined the sidewalks and
swayed and clacked. A storm brewed. Britt’s body charged and snapped with
energy much the same as the storm clouds. She could smell the fresh, strong
aroma of the coming rain and shivered when a cool breeze blew inland and
ruffled her hair.