Review: Dirty Sexy Inked by Carly Phillips and Erika Wilde

It’s been a while since I read a Carly Phillips book so when I read the blurb and saw the magic words ‘best friend’ I couldn’t read this fast enough!

Breaking hearts is what wild and rebellious Mason Kincaid does best. Hit it and quit it is his motto, and with his bad boy reputation and tattoos, he doesn’t lack for female companionship. Until one hot night with the one woman he swore he’d never touch becomes an all consuming addiction he can’t kick. Katrina Sands has been his best friend for years, but now that he knows what she feels like, and tastes like, there is no going back to being just friends. Hot, dirty sex has never felt so good…or so right.

Katrina, or Kat for short, and her best friend Mason are headed to Las Vegas for Mason’s brother’s wedding. Kat is exasperated with herself and her unrequited love for Mason, who has no clue. He’s talking about getting lucky in Vegas and she can’t catch a break. When Mason makes a random jokey comment about her getting lucky, she agrees with him and says maybe she will.

Well! Mason does NOT like the sound of that. And he hates the look of it too when Kat is dancing and some guy touches her. When he drags her off to his hotel room caveman style…well what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Right?

I thoroughly enjoyed Dirty Sexy Inked. Kat works for Mason, who owns his own tattoo shop. She didn’t have the best childhood, with a lecherous stepfather and that led her to some self-harming behaviours. But when Mason stands up for her on the school yard and then later protects her from her stepfather, these two are best buds for life. But along the way, Kat fell in love with her friend. And he grew up to be a sexy bad boy who loves ’em and leaves ’em. Mason has his own emotional scars from growing up with a neglectful mother. His older brother basically raised him and Mason was such a bad kid but his brothers and Kat were the only ones who ever stuck by him. And even though Mason loves Kat, he would never jeopardize her friendship by sleeping with her, especially when he feels he wouldn’t be able to fulfill her emotional needs and have a real relationship with her.

So the sexy times start off quickly in this story with Kat and Mason hooking up in Vegas. Both think its a Vegas thing, something they can get out of their system and return to their regularly scheduled life when they return to Chicago. But Mason doesn’t want to stop and he gets possessive, especially when one of his tattoo clients asks Kat out…and she agrees. You see Kat told herself she would find a new job once they returned home, and she’s quickly offered a job with an advertising company (she’s an artist).

I don’t want to spoil this book because it was a wonderful bundle of goodness that I read super quick, so I will say someone returns from Kat and Mason’s past that prevents the story from being predictable and that was a good thing.

I liked Kat and Mason’s characters. Kat’s yearning is a bit annoying right at the beginning but I got over it when she made a plan to move on. I like a woman that takes action. And Mason didn’t dilly dally too long either over his feelings for Kat. Sometimes that fear to take things to the next level in the friends-to-lovers trope can ruin things but that wasn’t the case here. Carly Phillips is a solid writer and she packs quite the story into a shorter page count. I think I need to check out Erika Wilde as well. This duo did a good job!

Dirty Sexy Inked get a B+ from me.