About THE DUKE AND THE DOMINA:
He’s poor. She’s rich.
He’s a sub. She’s a switch.
It’s not love.
It’s a marriage of Kink-venience.
Grayson Locke Danforth, in his wildest of dreams, never expected two things.
The first was to be recalled from India by Queen Victoria where he worked for the quiet purposes of the crown. He must now become the Duke of Warrick after the tragic deaths of his father and brothers. However, tragedy is entirely in the eyes of the beholder, and Grayson doesn’t want the title, or to return to what remains of his family. Grayson wants to remain invisible, an outcast, a man in exile for the way his body and mind behave and the secrets he needs to keep.
The second thing he never expected was to be forced into marriage to a woman from the twenty-first century.
Lulu is no mere woman, however. She’s a switch who works as a professional Dominatrix—at least, she did. When she wakes up in a strange house, a strange world, a strange body, she isn't quite sure what to think and is certain she’s dreaming. She has less than a day to gain her bearings and make a decision that will dictate the rest of her life in this world—whether or not to marry this beautiful stranger.
As Lulu and Grayson attempt to begin a life together, she discovers the true reason why this man is a stranger to his family. She can only hope she can persuade Grayson to accept who she is, and who he was born to be, before he forces her out of his life in order to maintain his well-kept secrets.
Trust doesn’t come easily to either of them, but it’s the only thing they have.
Grayson will have to give in to his need to submit in order to get his wife to open up and allow him to possess her fully in return.
It’s a cautious dance between two people who have never known how to trust, or love.
THIS IS THE FULLY ILLUSTRATED VERSION WITH NEARLY 100 PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGES
Buy links:
(The Duke and the Domina is exclusive available on iTunes and will be available at other e-retailers on June 22nd.)
GIVEAWAY DETAILS:
Jenn is giving away a set of the Lords of Time series (non-illustrated versions): THE RAKE AND THE RECLUSE, THE DUKE AND THE BARON and THE DUKE AND THE DOMINA.
RAFFLECOPTER CODE:
Excerpt
Lulu snapped the single tail just to the left of Oliver’s shoulder, letting the sonic boom send shudders through his muscles. She loved the dance of muscle as it rippled across the back of a client, the skin undulating like a soft wave carried to shore. She snapped it again quickly, this time on the right before the first ripple had a chance to make its way fully across the broad expanse of his back—and Oliver did have the loveliest back.
With near-perfect symmetry and structure, he was simply beautiful with his arms stretched out to the bedposts above his head. The canvas of his physique, almost flawlessly balanced, could not have been more suited to her art.
He pulled against the bindings on his wrists, his muscles tightening in the center and stiffening his spine. The tension straightened his back as the lats on both sides flexed. The action made his back even bigger and more impressive, exactly what she needed him to do, exactly as she had instructed, throughout his training.
Lulu waited for him to steady, then she struck him in earnest. First on the left just below his scapula, then on the right without pause.
Tonight she would give him the wings they’d worked so hard for.
She picked up the second bullwhip and tested the air with both bullwhips in tandem. This was her special trick and hers alone, and her clients paid thousands for the honor of it.
She followed the pattern of his muscles down his lats, not letting him breathe between the strikes because the tension played out in his back. The feathers of his wings, made by the welts of the whips, needed to follow his natural musculature in order to look perfect. It was a difficult and practiced dance. Each strike had to be exact, because she wasn’t to draw blood, yet, and it was incredibly easy to draw blood with a single tail. Much too easy.
For her part, the muscle control required of her had taken years to perfect, the ability to strike in tandem with an exacting weight and placement was nearly impossible. She practiced daily and worked her shoulders and back twice weekly to train out all signs of dominance on her left side. She worked harder than anyone else had ever considered doing. That’s why the clients paid, and they got exactly what they paid for.
Lulu painted his lats with the red feathers, different weights and lengths of strikes making different patterns until he looked as though his back would physically give birth to the wings she put there.
She set the bullwhips aside and picked up the Wartenberg wheel to add more subtle texture to the feathers. Then the evil stick for the center of the wings, for additional definition. She used multiple tools to complete her work, each leaving a different pattern.
She didn’t use the bullwhip where the bone was close to the surface, because the chance of drawing blood was much too high. Instead, she used the floggers to paint broad strokes, then the wheel and the stick to define. The final effect was well-defined crests with fluffier-looking feathers down to the tips, but it was the last feather that sold the piece.
She picked up her whips again for the final strikes, the most painful of all. They would hit the soft hollows below his ribs, carefully avoiding his kidneys, and painting the final, long feathers that would go from his sides to just on either side of his spine. The feathers would bracket those beautiful dimples in a searing pain he would remember for the rest of his days. These would bleed, but only slightly, and only because he’d asked for them to.
He yelled into it, a deep, throaty growl. They always did, if not during the process at least during the last strike. None of her subs could contain themselves through that final strike—blood or no.
Lulu dropped the bullwhips and inspected his back. The small cuts at his lower back bled two small rills of blood that slid easily into the dimples at his spine, pooling there. “Don’t move,” she whispered.
She walked to him and leaned across his back, careful to avoid streaking the blood while brushing his newly formed wings with her corseted breasts, running her fingers down his sides, at the very edges of his feather welts.
“Don’t move, don’t breathe, we’re almost there,” she whispered over his shoulder into his ear. Her breath sent goose bumps across his skin, his welts, causing shudders of pain to rack his body once again. She loved the sound that came from the depth of his rib cage. She wrapped her hands around his waist, skimming her thumbs just at the edges of the last welts to the center of his spine.
“Thank you, Mistress,” he breathed, his voice tense and hard but gracious, and she was brought to life in that. She hit a switch on the wall, then walked to her camera. The lighting was set, the stage created. All Lulu had to do was check the focus and press the shutter, and they would both have a permanent reminder of why they were here.
She stared into the ground glass at the upside-down reversed image to check the framing. “Don’t move, my darling,” she said as she made the final adjustments to the focus. This was one of her best yet, and she had the beautiful man before her to thank for it.
She grinned and gave a little booty shake at her excitement, but when she stepped to the side to take up the shutter release, her heel caught on the tripod and her ankle rolled. Her hand flew out to grab anything to help steady herself, catching the leg of the tripod. As the camera tipped she went down hard, hitting her head on the floor, the camera crashing down with her.
The entire thing landed just in front of her as though she were composing an image, their legs tangled like lovers. She could see the back of the camera, the image out of focus, the tilted room projected on the shattered glass, the wings she’d only just created attempting to take flight as Oliver fought against his cuffs.
She blinked, struggling to keep her eyes open, focusing intently on the back of her camera one more time to try to keep herself from passing out. As she felt the warmth of blood pooling beneath her skull. she heard him yell her name, but she could do nothing but close her eyes and dream of wings.
Meet Jenn:
Colorado. Canon. Curls. CJs. Chuck Norris.
Born and raised in this beautiful state —very nearly with a camera in hand— I never left. I started my own family, got used to the curls, went to college, built a CJ, started a business, and totally beat the daylights out of Chuck Norris, all with a camera in hand.
Spending my days in parenting chat rooms I got highly adept with one-handed typing and I can still type just about as fast with one hand as I can with two. It’s a great talent to have when engrossed in a scene and in need of a hit of caffeine.
Once I finished my first novel I quickly realized: I was born a photographer.
From the realization that someone ELSE would be shooting the cover of MY book my control-freak took over. What started as an easy cover shoot ballooned into this ground-breaking new kind of media, designed specifically for digital book readers. The Illustrated Romance.
I live and thrive off chaos and the constant flow of the creative process. I wear shorts and flip-flops year-round —much to the chagrin of my friends and family.
The images from my book started a ruckus, and from there, #StudioSmexy was born, I’ve since shot over 1,000 romance novel covers, and currently shoot custom images for very special clients.
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