Claimed By The British Rockstar Read online

  CONTENTS

  Claimed by the British Rock Star

  NEWSLETTER

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Epilogue

  Extended Epilogue

  NEWSLETTER

  A MAN WHO KNOWS WHAT HE WANTS

  BRATVA BEAR SHIFTERS

  LAIRDS & LADIES

  RUSSIAN UNDERWORLD

  IRISH WOLF SHIFTERS

  About the Author

  CLAIMED BY THE BRITISH ROCK STAR

  AN OLDER MAN YOUNGER WOMAN ROMANCE

  _______________________

  A MAN WHO KNOWS WHAT HE WANTS, 184

  FLORA FERRARI

  Copyright © 2020 by Flora Ferrari

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The following story contains mature themes, strong language and sexual situations. It is intended for mature readers.

  CLAIMED BY THE BRITISH ROCK STAR

  The tattooed, six-foot-seven, muscular lead singer of one of the biggest rock bands in the world spots me in the crowd and immediately claims me as his.

  This forty-two year old possessive older man knows how to take what he wants, and soon he has me wondering if I can be more than just an inexperienced eighteen year old girl. Can I please the British rock star?

  The problem is that I wasn’t at the show to see him. I was at the show to see my dad, who just so happens to be the lead singer’s bandmate and oldest friend.

  And yet I can’t stop dreaming about Maddox Copper claiming me like the inked primal savage he is, a man a million cuts above the immature douches my age.

  I have dreams of getting a degree in zoology and opening an animal sanctuary, but when Maddox and I come together in irrepressible lust, it’s like we’re the animals. This silver fox knows how to press all the right buttons.

  But he and my dad have been friends since they were eleven years old and bandmates for almost as long. How the heck is that supposed so work?

  And what can a naive younger woman like me do for a man like Maddox Copper, a rock star among rock stars, a man who must’ve had about a million groupies throwing themselves at him over the years? What if I can’t get over my insecurities, the voices whispering in my head that I’m just not good enough?

  What if my past demons come back to haunt me and it all comes crashing down?

  *CLAIMED BY THE BRITISH ROCK STAR is an insta-everything standalone instalove romance with a HEA, no cheating, and no cliffhanger.

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  CHAPTER ONE

  Maddox

  “So I guess you’ll be settling down now, eh?” Freddie calls over to me as he twirls his drumsticks around his tattooed fingers, bobbing his head along to the opening act’s beat. His long hair falls over his eyes, shifting with his movements. “What’d you reckon, Si? Time for Maddox to settle down?”

  Simon grins, a wiry man with a jet-black ponytail and eyeliner, still clinging to the look the Shadow’s Crow had ten years ago.

  “We got more chance seeing pigs do synchronized flying.”

  I shake my head, leaning back and taking a sip of water. I’m wearing a black T-shirt and blue jeans with chunky boots, but gone are the days of long, wild hair. My arms are still covered in the same sleeved ink, but our days of touring are almost behind us.

  I’m forty-two years old.

  And they’re right.

  The need to progress to the next chapter of my life is like a drumbeat in my chest.

  But there’s another feeling throbbing in my chest, and that’s the knowledge that I haven’t and probably never will meet the woman who will rock my rock star world. I always assumed I’d know, like a punch in the bloody face, when I saw her.

  I’d just fucking scent her, like a wild animal on the Savannah, but it turns out this bloke is destined to be alone.

  Fine, fair enough, no use crying over spilt milk and all that.

  “Seriously, mate,” Si says. “Are you gonna be alright once it’s all said and done? I mean, we’ve all got families and kids to keep us busy.”

  He’s grinning, bantering, and I can read a teasing note in his eyes.

  “I’m sure I’ll cry myself to sleep every night, mate,” I laugh grimly.

  “Yeah,” Freddie says, rolling his eyes. “All he’s got to keep him busy is his record label, not to mention about a dozen other businesses. He’s gonna have a real tough time.”

  We all laugh and then the door opens, letting in a slice of cluttered backstage hallway and then Lenard, our lead guitarist.

  Lenard and I first met when we were eleven years old, starting a punk band in his mom’s shed, singing badly and playing worse.

  But we never gave up the dream, and at seventeen we started Shadow’s Crow, and got signed three years later, and since then it’s been like a fever dream of shows and albums and jet-setting madness.

  Lenard moved here to the States, while I stayed in the UK – though I have properties here – and as he walks into the room, I can’t help but let a smirk touch my lips. My old friend’s got an LA tan and he’s wearing flip-flips and baggy shorts.

  “The fuck are you wearing?” Freddie chuckles.

  “I’m late,” Lenard says, as if that explains it. “I’ll be ready before we go on stage, fellas, don’t worry.”

  “He’s running on LA time now,” Simon grins.

  Lenard walks to the adjacent door, across the landscape of posters and flowers and gift cards and guitars and wires, and closes it quietly behind him.

  I lean back and let myself relax, willing the calm to come over me that has given me safe passage through thousands of performances. I work my mouth and let my vocal cords relax, not bothering with warm up exercises.

  I never have.

  Be ready to attack, always.

  Our manager told us that the day after we got signed, meaning that at the drop of a hat we ought to be ready to perform, wherever, whenever.

  Those were words I lived by in my craft, but also in my search for a woman, the woman.

  I always knew my body would swirl with primal need when I sighted her, my body would surge and I’d know to take her, with no doubts, no hesitation.

  Take her and put my seed in her waiting, aching womb.

  But as the years drifted by and as Shadow’s Crow got more and more popular, I never saw her, not even a glimpse of what I’d come to expect would come if given only time.

  “What’d you think about our last show being in LA?” Simon asks, a subtle smile on his gaunt face. “I’d have preferred London, man. Imagine that. A sea of pasty English faces grinning up at us. All sun-starved and ready for some real rock and roll.”

  “Remind me why he doesn’t write the lyrics again?” Freddie guffaws, tossing his drumsticks around like batons. “Sun-starved and ready for
some real rock and roll. Mate, just shut up. Let your guitar do the talking.”

  Simon flips him the bird and then Lenard emerges, wearing his baggy black shirt with his hair spiked all over the place with product, his face more wrinkled and fuller than we would’ve believed a face could get back in the day. But if I look close, I can still see the excited twenty year old kid, leaping around our rundown flat in London, yelling about how we made it and we’re going to be huge.

  Before settling down, Lenard let himself get suckered in by the rock star life, the drugs and the parties and all those things that make a man prematurely old.

  But now he has a wife and a daughter, Myla, and happiness radiates from his LA tanned face.

  Lenard walks over, grinning. “Reckon you’ll visit more now we’re retiring?”

  “Retiring?” I mutter. “I’ll be busier than ever.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he says. “Don’t know why though. We’ve got enough money to live like kings for the rest of our lives.”

  “How’s the family?” I ask.

  “Good, good,” he says. “Myla graduated high school a few months back. She wants to go to college. Zoology. Tina’s bringing her to the show tonight, actually.”

  I raise my eyebrows. “You never let her come to the shows.”

  He shrugs. “She’s old enough, I reckon. Eighteen years old. Plus, it’s our last one. It’s a historical moment.”

  I let my lips tug upward for a brief second. “Can you believe it, Len? We started in a shitty pub in Hackney, the microphone not even working, half the crowd not even paying attention.”

  “And now look at us,” he agrees, beaming. But then his face drops, his features sinking into seriousness. “I wish you’d find somebody to share it with though. It makes it all so much sweeter.”

  “You’re getting sentimental in your old age.”

  He chuckles and runs a hand through his hair. “It’s the truth, man. It’s the goddamned truth.”

  Finally, the opening act winds down and then I hear the hush of the crowd, the murmurs of excitement getting louder and louder as the deep voiced announcer speaks over the arena.

  He lists all our accolades and our long history of rock star baddassery, but I just let the words recede into the background as we make our way to the stage and take up our positions behind the curtain.

  I move to the microphone and let my fingers move up the stand, knowing it will be the last time, knowing that my future stretches uncertainly before me.

  There are my businesses, my dozens of properties, the freedom to do anything I want whenever I want.

  But there’s no her, the woman who will give me the family to make it all truly worth it.

  And perhaps there never will be.

  Finally, the curtains lift and the lights blaze on the stage.

  I see her.

  As Freddie starts the amped-up drumbeat that introduces one of our most famous songs ‘Devils in the Snow’ I spot her at the front of the crowd.

  I feel an energy form somewhere deep inside of me, gathering, urging me to leap down into the crowd and fist her long, wavy blonde hair, her hair which cascades like golden water down to her shoulders.

  Her body is curvaceous in the extreme, the sort of child-bearing hips that almost drive me feral. She’s wearing a baggy Shadow’s Crow T-shirt that still hints at the voluptuousness of her chest, her legs held in jeans that make me want to pull aside the metal railing and palm her flesh, squeeze, satisfy.

  I realize that I’ve let my cue pass, that the guitar intro has lengthened as my bandmates glance at me, wondering why I haven’t started, wondering why I haven’t launched in with my husky, volcanic vocals.

  “Ladies and gentleman,” I say, but I stare at her with every word, letting my gaze sear into her open face, her cheeks slightly flushed, her hands gripping the railing as she gazes up at me. “I’d like to thank you all for coming. And apologize. Because this is our last show, and your ears will be ringing by the time you leave this fucking arena.”

  The crowd erupts into a frenzy at that, screaming and roaring as a thousand flashes try to blind me.

  But as I wrench the microphone from the stand and start the song, I never let my eyes leave her.

  I found her.

  After all these years, I finally found her.

  I lock my gaze on her as though any moment she could disappear, as though she might dissolve into the smoke that floods onto the stage as our second song begins.

  I feel my manhood twitching and roaring at me to take her, to claim her, to pump my seed into those luscious curves until she’s screaming and begging for more, for all my seed.

  And then my gaze shifts to someone she’s talking to.

  I feel something drop inside me when I recognize the woman.

  It’s Tina, Lenard’s wife, my best friend’s wife.

  Which means the woman at her side must be Myla, Lenard’s daughter.

  Oh, fuck.

  The woman I’ve chosen, the woman I know now, without a single doubt in my mind, I can never live without, is my best friend’s daughter.

  Fuck.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Myla

  “Did you enjoy the show?” Mom asks as she switches lanes and glides down the highway, the traffic coming to a slow halt as we sit under the clear Californian sky.

  I manage a nod, but something is swirling inside me, a silly thought taking root no matter how much I try to batter it down.

  For a few songs, I could’ve sworn that Maddox was staring at me, his eyes searing into me as his powerful chest produced the husky notes, his British accent like a mix between James Bond and a freaking jet engine.

  He was huge and heaving on stage, all six foot seven of him tense and ready to explode, it seemed to me.

  His arms, sleeved in tattoos, bulged as he gripped the mic like a lover.

  Like I want him to grip me.

  Toward the end, he’d torn his shirt off in a fit of animal frenzy and every woman in the crowd had gone wild, screaming, their voices rising into the hot air like spectators at a gladiatorial game baying for blood.

  My mouth had fallen open as my eyes coated every inch of his sweaty, rock hard skin, his abs a solid bulk of muscle with lines for each pack, his pectorals round and powerful. His hair wasn’t dyed like Dad’s or the other band members. It was iron grey with flecks of obsidian, as though he wasn’t ashamed of his age, of who he really was.

  And maybe I was going insane, because when he was shirtless, I could’ve sworn his stark green eyes were flaming into me again, his heaving chest making me want to grab it, to feel how rock solid it must’ve been.

  I let my forehead rest against the glass as the car comes to a stop in traffic, letting the warm window press against my skin.

  Stop being an idiot.

  He was most likely looking at some groupie behind me or next to me, since the crowd was so squashed and packed I couldn’t be sure who was near me.

  But as we entered the arena I saw what seemed like an endless army of women, all skinnier and prettier and wearing fewer clothes than my baggy ensemble, all of them clearly ready to perform whatever deeds the band required of them. And, since Maddox was the only single member of the band, and since he was the hotter-than-hell lead singer, I bet right now they’re all throwing themselves at his feet like sacrificial lambs.

  My hand strays to my throat, where Grandma’s necklace used to be.

  Used to be.

  But that was before I let my mind get carried away with me and started to believe I was anything other than the shy girl who lived in the background of other people’s lives.

  I’m never the main character.

  I’m never her, the one who matters.

  I’m an extra in my own life.

  I shake my head again, letting out a sigh. There’s no need to get morbid just because I let my mind play a trick on me, making me believe for a few moments that the man I’d crushed on in my younger teen years – I mean, who hadn�
��t crushed on Maddox Copper – was staring at me with beast-like lust.

  “Are you okay, Myla?” Mom asks as the traffic eases and we start to inch forward. “You seem very quiet.”

  “I’m fine,” I tell her, forcing my lips into a warm smile. “I’m just thinking about the show. It was awesome to see Dad up there.”

  That’s a lie, sort of, because as the show progressed it was impossible to wrench my gaze away from Maddox, my eyes fixated on him like lasers, and my traitor mind telling me that his were fixated on me, too.

  “I’m glad you got to see it.” Mom smiles. “I’m also glad that the band has all agreed to retire. I know that worried your father, you know, the resentment that would build if one person wanted to keep it going. But they’re all happy with what they achieved. Can you believe it? Maddox and Lenard have been friends since they were eleven years old, and now look at them.”

  “It’s crazy,” I mutter, feeling a stabbing in my mind as I grip my knees through my baggy pants.

  Even if, in some parallel upside-down universe, Maddox was staring at me with that primordial want I’d imagined, it wouldn’t matter anyway. Maddox is more than twice my age – not that I care about that – and, more importantly, he’s my dad’s best friend.

  I’m letting myself slide shamefully into fantasy land, the same way I did with Aaron, the same messy thought process that resulted in my Grandma’s necklace disappearing from my life.

  “Oh, Myla,” Mom had said when I told her I’d lost it, crossing her arms and letting her eyes flit over the ruined landscape of our home, so many items missing, stolen, and her daughter wouldn’t even say why.

  I bet she hated me for not giving her the name of the thief. I bet she still does, a little.

  But how can I tell her?

  There’s a sword hanging over my head, and he holds it.

  When we get home, the electronic gates slide open and Mom glides the car up the driveway to our five-bedroom home, I excuse myself and go to bed.

  I shut the door and drop down in the darkness, not bothering with the lights, just closing my eyes and sinking deeper into oblivion.