Claimed By The British Rockstar Read online

  But even though my body is sore from volunteering at the shelter earlier in the day and then the show, my mind won’t settle, leaping around like a frenetic ball of nonsense in my mind.

  It keeps returning to Maddox and the way his muscles rippled and his eyes gleamed in the show, his tattoos shifting like alive things as his muscular arms twitched.

  In my mind, I hear the echoing of an empty arena, and suddenly it’s just the two of us, Mom and Dad and the rest of the band gone, every single scantily clad groupie gone, the rest of the crowd disappearing in puffs of smoke.

  I see Maddox prowling down the stage like the hunter he is, his eyes fixated on me as goosebumps prickle my nervous skin.

  “I can’t stop myself,” he growls in my mind, causing my sex to ache and pulse and thrum with hungry energy. “Come here, Myla. You’re going to do whatever I tell you, aren’t you?”

  And then he leans across and rubs his thumb along my lips, making them tingle, pausing at the corner of my mouth before he leans forward and …

  I let my eyes fly open and the lesser darkness of my bedroom flood my vision.

  Stop being an idiot, I tell myself, trying to hammer away these wayward thoughts before they drive me insane.

  The next day, I’m standing outside the chimpanzee enclosure at the shelter where I volunteer, sweeping the pathway from where the adventurous animals have decided to start tossing their excrement. The sun blazes down and I have a smile on my face, my hair pulled tautly back in a tight ponytail.

  Even if the task is unglamorous, this is exactly where I belong, helping animals even in a minor way.

  One day, I hope, I’ll be a qualified zoologist and have a shelter of my own, but for now …

  Sweep, sweep, sweep.

  I pause for a moment and look around the shelter, letting my eyes flit over the large open space cages, and then settle on Blake and Lively, named after the actress as they loll in their tire swings and throw bored glances my way. Still, it’s better than what they usually throw.

  “Not impressed with your handiwork?” I call over.

  I swear Lively grins before rolling over and tucking herself up for a nap.

  This shelter isn’t open to the public and its only purpose is to house animals who have suffered some kind of abuse, and every day I get to work here – even if it’s doing the dirtiest tasks – I just feel so much contentment and happiness whelming up inside of me.

  After sweeping and using gloves to deposit the ehem mess into a trash bag, I walk across the shelter toward the large rear bins, having to jump so that I can reach the lip of the unnecessarily tall container. I throw it in and then hold my breath against the reeking smell, turning and striding back across the shelter.

  Then my manager, Lacy, pokes her head out of the main office. She’s about forty with dyed pink hair and a confident, sassy way of holding herself I could only imagine possessing.

  A playful look tugs on her features as she eyes me, one eyebrow raised.

  “Uh, Myla?” she calls.

  “Yeah?” I say, wandering over.

  “I don’t know if I’m hallucinating, but I think Maddox Copper is here to see you. You know, the lead singer of Shadow’s Crow.”

  My mouth falls open and for a long moment I stare at her as though struck mute.

  “Sorry?” I say after a pause. “Maddox is here … to see me.”

  She nods, her pink bun bobbing. “That’s right,” she says. “He’s waiting in the main office.”

  “Maddox Copper is here to see me?” I say again.

  She giggles and shakes her head. “You can say it as many times as you want, girl, but it ain’t gonna stop from being true.”

  I’m still shaking my head as I peel off my gloves and walk through the office, painfully aware of my smell, wishing he’d come at the end of my shift after I’d showered and changed into fresh clothes.

  Why is he here?

  Is it something to do with Mom and Dad?

  My mind whirs with possibilities as I push the door open to find that, yes, Maddox Copper really is standing in the lobby, wearing a steel grey suit with his iron hair slicked to the side, an expensive watch glittering at his wrist, his tattoos just about visible beneath the band.

  His eyes narrow as he takes in the sight of me, sweaty and baggy, a wisp of hair coming loose from my ponytail and twirling around my head.

  I swallow.

  “Um, yes?” I say.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Maddox

  I feel the tension in my body get tighter as I drink in the sight of her, her pale blue uniform shirt doing nothing to hide the curves beneath, her breasts pushing against the fabric and begging me to palm them, to squeeze, to make her moan and scream for me.

  She wears thick chino type pants, working trousers, and they just drive me even wilder, because they leave so damn much to the imagination. I could peel them down slowly, revealing every inch of her flesh like a delicious meal I want to take my time with, and then slide my hand up the exposed skin to her panties and rub her sex, feel how wet she gets, see if it seeps through the material in vivid spots.

  Her hair is pulled back in a tame-the-wild ponytail, but a few strands have come loose, making me want to fist and free the rest of her blonde locks.

  And Jesus Christ, her smell, her primal fucking scent.

  Her sweat tinges the air, a just her scent, and I swear I can detect her pussy and her womb, her desire, all intermingling and making the base of my manhood throb in primal yearning.

  Um, yes?

  The words register but I barely hear them, I’m so caught up in devouring her with my eyes.

  “Hello, Myla,” I say, realizing as the words leave my mouth I didn’t plan what I was going to say.

  “Hello?” she says, making it a question as she crosses the room and pauses near the table I’m standing beside.

  She grips the back of an office style chair, her unpainted fingernails digging into the leather.

  There’s something intoxicating about her short, real fingernails. There’s no artifice at all, no attempt to trick or beguile me. My woman is all woman, all her, and it takes everything I have not to slam that door shut behind her and bend her over the table, to tear off those trousers and plunge my hot, wet cock into her pussy, and just fucking pound, pound her so that her voluptuous ass cheeks bounce against my abs.

  “I just wanted to come and say thank you for coming to the show last night,” I say, smoothly finding the words, but mostly still just allowing my mind to romp madly over the idea of taking her.

  And taking her hard.

  “Oh, that’s okay,” she says. “I mean, it was good to see Dad, well all of you, for the final show. I’ve seen videos. But being there is a different experience.”

  A subtle flush has crept up her neck and over her cheeks, making her red, as red as my passion firing on all cylinders in my body.

  I wonder if she knows, too, if she feels it on some level.

  If she wasn’t Lenard’s daughter, I’d already be slamming that door shut and exploring her full lips with mine, tasting her, sliding my hand up her thighs and squeezing her round ass cheeks. I imagine the sighing, shivering sound she’d make if I spanked her, lightly, playfully, and then lifted her onto the table and split her legs, exposing her sex, licking, nibbling.

  Making her come.

  Over and over.

  She’s my best friend’s daughter.

  That’s the only fact that holds me back, that stops me from taking her right now.

  But then, why am I here, officially? To thank her for coming to my show? Surely she can see through that?

  “How do you like working at the shelter?” I ask, moving closer, feeling the heat radiating from her body.

  Her lips twitch into a genuine smile and her pale blue eyes glint. “I love it. I really, really love it. I’m hoping to study zoology next year, but I’m taking a gap year, you know, working here and getting some experience. In fact, I’m actually ho
ping to have my own shelter one day.”

  She cuts off, an endearing giggle accompanying the smile.

  “But I’m sure you didn’t come here to hear all about my silly dreams.”

  “They’re not silly,” I say quickly, my voice with a savage twinge to it. “Not at all.”

  “So why …”

  She trails off and the flush spreads down her neck into the folds of her shirt.

  I’d love to follow that flush, to see if her pale breasts have turned red, to see if her nipples are the same vivid shade.

  Or if I could make them that shade by sucking them, massaging them, playing with them as though they’re already producing the life giving milk that’s going to feed every one of the children I pump into her fertile body.

  Why are you here?

  The unsaid question hangs between us.

  “I’m going to adopt a dog,” I say, as my mind throws up a reasonable explanation for my being here.

  I can’t yet make explicit the river of lava running beneath my skin, the passionate want I feel for this woman every time I let my eyes roam up and down her body, roaring at me to take her, to take her right fucking now.

  Lenard’s been my friend since we were kids in London, messing around in the damp, chilly shed, the idea that we’d ever grow to the size we did and sell out stadiums and arenas absurd to everybody but us eleven year old dreamers.

  And yet I know there’s a time where I’ll have to tell Myla the truth.

  I almost want to roar it like a lion right now.

  I’m claiming you. You’re mine. Forever.

  “A dog?” she says, her face lighting up with maternal devotion, a look that cements what I knew the moment I laid eyes on her.

  She’s going to make an incredible mother.

  “I have a property in the Hills,” I tell her. “I’m thinking of spending more time in the States to work on the record label in a more hands on way. And what man can live without a faithful companion? I was hoping you’d come to the rescue shelter with me, since you know so much about animals.”

  Her eyes widen for a moment and for a second I think she knows what we have, what we’re going to have.

  Then the looks flits away as her lips twitch nervously.

  “Um, sure,” she says. “I’d be happy to do that. When do you want to go?”

  “When do you finish?” I ask.

  “In about three hours.”

  “Then I’ll pick you up in three hours,” I tell her.

  She nods, but I have to leave, walking out of the door and ducking my head so I don’t bump my head on the frame. My heart is thundering in my chest and my balls feel like two weighted stones in my underwear, my seed writhing around and trying to pump up my thick shaft and into her perfect fleshy folds.

  I swagger over to my custom Jaguar and press the button, the doors flipping up like wings.

  I climb inside, the seat as far back as it’ll go since these beasts aren’t exactly made for giant men, and then grip the steering wheel, my knuckles turning white as the sun blares down the same bone white color.

  But nothing is as hot as the passion flaring inside me for Myla, as my mind goes over and over how stunning she looked in her shelter uniform.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Myla

  I emerge from the small shower in the shelter offices and walk to my locker, a towel wrapped around my body and the smell of shampoo and soap filling the air.

  I quickly rub the towel over my body, trying and failing not to imagine that it’s Maddox’s hands instead, caressing, exploring every inch of me.

  I let my hand stray to my throat, to the necklace Aaron stole, the necklace Mom gave me on my twelfth birthday after explaining how her mother had given it to her, how it held all the love and sentimental value her deceased mother could no longer provide.

  And I lost it.

  Because I was gullible.

  Because I let myself believe that I wasn’t just the silly easy-to-ignore girl stalking silently through the high school corridors.

  At least now I have a reason why Maddox would ever glance my way more than once. He wants me to help him choose a dog, which makes complete sense. Of course it has nothing to do with some made up chemistry, some electric want.

  After drying myself off, I pull on the summer dress I now regret packing, because it hugs too tightly to my body and reveals too much thigh, and I just know that Maddox is going to find it off putting.

  As I walk out of the shelter and onto the street, I expect to see the parking lot empty except for Lacy’s Volkswagen, but then I spot the Jaguar, ice blue with the doors flipped up, Maddox leaning against it like the cover of a freaking magazine.

  Something urgent pulses through me, the desire to throw myself at him and taste him, and have him taste me, so overpowering I almost cave into it right here, just run at him and see what happens.

  But nothing would happen, because I’m not some stick-thin groupie.

  I haven’t got the experience he’s probably used to.

  I’m the silly girl who falls for silly tricks and I need to remember that.

  “Myla,” he says, pushing away from the car.

  His eyes roam over my body, pausing at my legs, and I swallow a ball of anxiety as I quickly walk around the car to put something solid between us.

  “Shall we get going?” I ask, avoiding his eyes, my cheeks flaming traitorously crimson.

  “Sure,” he says, voice deep and husky just like onstage. He climbs into the car and I feel it shift under his impressive weight. “I don’t want to keep my new companion waiting.”

  For a blissful, absurd second, I think, he means me. I’m the new companion.

  But of course he means the dog.

  I really need to calm the heck down right now.

  He starts the engine with a swipe of his thumb against a futuristic pad and the car rumbles to life, a growling beast of a machine that reminds me of the way Maddox looked on stage, chest heaving, muscles pulsing.

  I know that any other man would make a comment about how fancy his car is, a subtle financial flex, but Maddox just takes it as a matter of course, backing the Jaguar out glidingly and turning it around.

  He takes us toward the highway as the sun still hangs a few notches above the horizon, a white penny casting a cloudless glow over the rain starved city.

  I finished my shift at five o’clock, so I’m assuming there are a few shelters still open.

  After all, don’t nine-to-fivers need to adopt pets, too?

  But there’s still this voice niggling in my mind, this invasive hateful voice that tells me Maddox is taking me to the battleground of some warped trick, a place he’s going to humiliate me, make fun of me, make me hate myself even more than the jock-lord Aaron did.

  “Myla, are you okay?” he asks, glancing at me briefly as we come to a stop beside a red light just off the exit ramp.

  “Um, yeah,” I mutter.

  “You never have to do anything you don’t want to,” he says, voice deep, infused with sudden intensity. “Not when I’m around.”

  A thrill moves through me and tingles prick my skin. What the heck does that even mean?

  Not when he’s around?

  But who is he, to me, really?

  “I guess you’re a really good friend of the family,” I mutter, wringing my sweat flecked hands together, achingly aware of the closeness of his hulking form, his head bent over slightly in the car seat.

  “Hmm,” he mutters in a low animalistic growl, non committing.

  The idea that I’ve said something wrong needles me as we continue to glide.

  Finally after some steely silence Maddox pulls us into the parking lot of Protecting Paws Dog Shelter, the sign a faded paw image and the double doors thrown open to the sun. From within, the sounds of yapping drift over to us, intermingling in the air, with a deeper, huskier bark underneath it.

  “He sounds like you,” I say before I can think to stop myself. “The deep one. Al
l angry and intimidating.”

  He smirks and turns his glinting, serious eyes to me.

  “Is that how I sound, eh?” he says, a joking tone undercutting his voice. His British accent sounds so freaking strong right now. “A big dog?”

  “Yep,” I say, finding an odd strand of courage from someplace. “A big angry dog.”

  He shrugs his massive shoulders, the iron gray suit clinging tightly. “I guess there are worse things to be called. Come on, Myla. It’s time you put your animal expertise to work.”

  “I’m not an expert.”

  “Yet, Miss Zoologist.”

  A flush spreads across my skin as the compliment infuses me and then the doors flip open wing-style and we both step out. I can’t help but feel a tingle drift over my skin as we head toward the entrance, Maddox’s eyes roaming over my fluttering summer dress.

  Of course fate or some trickster in the sky chooses now to send a gust of wind through the lot, giving Maddox an even more gross-out glimpse of my thighs.

  I tug on the hem of the skirt and pull it down, almost apologizing.

  Maddox’s features are pulled tightly across his face, his lips a flat line, his eyes fixated on me in something like godly fury. For a moment I imagine him grabbing my shoulders and hauling me off my feet, whispering in my ear, “Let me see the rest of those fucking legs. Now.”

  And then he’d push my panties aside and explore my wetness.

  But no, of course not, because that’s just the silly dream of a silly girl.

  Time to start living in reality, Myla.

  We walk into the shelter, Maddox must’ve called ahead of time, because we just walk right through reception and to the cages at the back. My heart cracks and almost shatters when I see the dogs locked in their cages, some of them with patchy fur, others shivering in corners.

  “Poor bastards,” Maddox mutters. “I’ll give one of them a good life, though. I’ve got a property here with a full time butler, and Kenneth loves dogs. And even when I’m not around, I’ll pay the best dog-sitter in the whole damn city. The best food, the best toys, the best medical care, whatever it needs.”

  We walk among the cages, my heart thundering in the small space. The walkway is narrow and at several points he brushes almost right up against me, his muscles rock hard through the fabric of his suit. I feel my nipples pricking and screaming for another touch, a more serious one, for his hands to grip and tease and play with me.