“You’re the troll from the bar.” I smile, and Rita gives me a confused glance.
“Nice to see you, Sean.” Noah gives him a knuckle bump. “You sure you wanna give up the pub for this place? That business has been in your family for centuries.”
The troll shrugs as he walks farther into the studio. “Change is good. Besides, Regina needs some help chaperoning you all, and it gives me an excuse to spend more time with her. Adam’s making sure the pub is taken care of.”
“So that’s who you’re with!” I blurt, and Regina starts to giggle. Now it made sense when Adam told her he’d take her back to his place, after she was drained from conjuring the portals. He meant the pub he helps Sean take care of. And here, all this time, I thought Regina was scooping up our groupies.
“I couldn’t tell you we were together before.” She glances at me and Rita. “I’ve been sneaking him into concerts for about a year now.”
I hand the Fender over to Sean as he thunders, “You guys are awesome. When Regina asked me if I wanted to try out for lead guitar, I didn’t hesitate.”
“Trolls are very musical,” Regina says proudly as she drapes an arm over Sean’s huge shoulders. “Wait till you hear him shred.”
The troll blushes and looks away. “Aww, thanks, sweetie. But I’m no Steve Vai or anything.”
“Play for us, dude!” I shout, urging on the shy troll.
He positions the guitar and adjusts his hand on the neck. Then his fingers sail over the strings and he makes the instrument wail expertly. My mouth drops open and Rita and Noah gape at him.
“I had no idea you could do that,” Noah says.
Looks like Glamour still holds a lot of surprises for all of us, I think to myself as I pick up my bass again.
“We should write a song about our new monster life,” Rita says, while she tunes her drums. “Shit, make that a whole album.”
“I get to read the lyrics first,” Regina pipes up. “Have to approve them, ya know? Can’t have human beans learning about us monster types.”
Laughing, Rita rolls her eyes. “Yeah, cause it’s not like hundreds of writers haven’t told stories about monsters before.”
“Make that millions, actually.” Sean winks and rips into another wild riff.
***
Claimed by the Bad Boy
Bad Boys of BDSM Volume 2
By Anita Lawless
Corey is determined to reclaim Bekka’s heart.
***
Claimed by the Bad Boy
Prologue
Corey sat on the bed, head in hands, as Bekka paced the carpet with her arms crossed over her chest.
“Bekka.” He looked up at her and tears streaked his chiseled face. “Don’t do this, please?”
She touched his cheek, running her fingers through his trimmed, dark beard. “I have to, baby.” Bekka dropped her head. “I’m sorry.”
He grabbed her hands—a desperate look in his eyes—as she tried to pull away and continue packing. “Stay, darling, please. We can work this out. I know we can.”
Fighting her own tears, Bekka managed a weak smile, shaking her head as she tossed another shirt into the suitcase. “It’s been three years, baby. Three years, and nothing has changed.” She shrugged and swallowed back a sob. “Maybe we just came together at the wrong time, you know? I wanted to believe in us, Corey. I did…”
Corey got up from the edge of the bed and crossed to the closet, standing in front of it, stopping her progress, folding his well-developed arms over his broad chest. “I can’t let you go.”
“You have to, baby.” She caressed his face and heaved a deep, ragged sigh. “Things end sometimes, for different reasons. You’re not a bad person, Corey, but…you’ve changed. I’ve changed. We’re not the same people who came into this relationship. I think we both want different things now.”
Corey shook his head and grabbed her wrist. “You’re wrong. We can work this out. We just need to sit down, talk—”
“I’m leaving, sweetie.” Bowing her head so he couldn’t catch the pain in her eyes, Bekka pushed him away. “Please, just accept that and let me go.”
Corey backed away from the closet. He stalked from the bedroom, slamming the door as he left.
***
Chapter 1
Bekka carefully unwrapped the package that sat atop her glass display case. It was an H.P. Lovecraft original, and being a lifelong fan of horror she couldn’t help but smile wide as she gazed down upon the book. Damn, she thought, It’s nice to enjoy what you do for a living.
Bekka had rented the space for her rare used books/oddities/antiques store around two years ago, right after her divorce from Corey was finalized. The memory of their uncomfortable parting made her sigh as she ran a reverent hand over the book’s cover.
She thought back to their final day together, remembered Corey and Juanita begging her to reconsider leaving. But Bekka had learned one lesson living with her husband and his stepmother for two years: There was only room for one woman in a man’s life, at least, when it came to living under one roof.
After enduring two and a half years with the meddlesome but well meaning woman, Bekka had to admit defeat. It wasn’t that Juanita had meant to gobble up every spare moment of Corey’s time, or that she meant to horn in on their relationship. It just happened. And Bekka, powerless to stop it but desperately wishing she could, had to do some soul searching before she dropped the dreaded “D” word on Corey.
It had practically killed him. She would never forget the look of hollow sorrow in his eyes that day.
“Why the hell am I doing this to myself?” she muttered to a china Buddha smiling cheerily at her from where it sat in a tall, glass display case.
Glancing at the calendar by the door, Bekka came around front to flip the CLOSED sign to OPEN.
She looked down at the dusty motorcycle boots on the other side of the glass, wood-framed entrance. Her eyes followed them up to black jeans, and she swallowed as her fingers closed over the sign.
Two years. Bekka never thought she’d see him again, even though they lived only forty-five minutes apart.
But there he was, standing on the other side of the door, smiling in at her, wearing a black t-shirt and sunglasses. It gave him that enigmatic, slightly dangerous look she’d always loved about him.
Corey Varkov. Her ex-husband. Bekka stared and her hand trembled on the sign.
Corey pointed to the doorknob, smiled—showing his deep dimples—and raised his eyebrows.
Nodding her head, Bekka forced a smile through her shock, fumbled with the key in her hand, and let him in.
“What…” Her voice cracked and her throat dried. “What are you doing here?” She cursed her words for deserting her at the worst possible moment.
Corey looked around her shop and walked about casually. He took off his glasses and exposed those deadly blue eyes. Bekka flipped the sign quickly and made a retreat behind the counter.
“I’m doing great, Bekka. Thanks for asking. How are things with you these days?” He leaned over the counter and stared at her. Not smiling, not frowning, just wearing an impassive face. The stance he knew unnerved Bekka the most. Damn, how she hated him, but was so incredibly happy to see him in that same moment.
“I-I didn’t mean anything by not asking how you were, Corey.” She crossed her arms tightly over her breasts and set her jaw. “It’s just a bit of a shock, seeing you here all of a sudden like this.”
“Well.” He propped one tattooed elbow on the covered counter. “There’s a good reason for my visit.” Standing upright, he walked toward the wall display of pewter dragons and various mythical creatures. “I just bought the place across from your shop. I’m moving Black Magick Tattoo and Designs into the city. Mom’s got her own things to do, doesn’t really need me around to help much anymore. Plus, she has a new beau she wants to be closer to.” He rolled his eyes and chuckled. “She’s putting the farmhouse up for sale soon. So, looks like I’m on my ow
n, and the apartment above the shop is more than enough for me.”
She was surprised by how quickly he moved back to the counter; his hands now braced on the silk cover that protected the glass top. His stealth used to thrill her. Such a large, muscular man, yet he moved like a cat, while Bekka was as klutzy as a big dog in a china shop.
“We’ll be neighbors?” Bekka frowned and pretended she found a dirty spot on the edge of the display case.
“Looks that way.”
Out of her side vision, Bekka caught his lecherous smile, and a warm heat fluttered in her groin as she swallowed.
***
Had she been affected by his visit? Corey had watched for subtle signs and he thought he’d caught a few, but perhaps that was just wishful thinking on his part.
Damn, it was so good to see her again. Bekka looked even better than she had two years ago when she’d walked out on him. His heart ached as he thought of those big, startled grey eyes this morning, staring at him in surprise. If it took him until his death, Corey was going to get her back. Some way, some how. So much had changed since their split, and he just hoped he could show her that, convince her wary heart that life with him would be different this time around.
It had taken all his strength not to take her in his arms right there in her shop, kiss her hard, and inhale the scent of her hair, her skin. He’d missed her so much these past two years, and he had worked hard to get back on his feet, become a free man, and come after the only woman he’d ever really loved. The only woman that ever really understood him.
It wasn’t that his step-mom, Juanita, meant to come between them while Bekka and Corey had been living with her. Corey and Bekka had fallen on some hard times financially back then, and Juanita had offered to help them out by giving them a place to stay until they got on their feet.
Juanita and Bekka had rented a shop in the small town they’d lived on the outskirts of, and they’d ran a successful café in the farming community of Rexton. Corey had started his tattoo business out of the home they’d shared, and now his talent had earned him a well-known name, from Moncton, to Saint John, to Fredericton and well beyond. People thought nothing of driving for hours, even days, to come and have a tattoo done by him. He’d even had people come up from the States to have work done by him.
Just before the divorce, he’d made enough to buy a shop in Rexton, which had been even better for business, since it offered a more central location for his clients. Now he’d sold that place to a tattooist who’d been his apprentice, and with the profit he bought the new Moncton shop and invested some funds.
After Bekka left him, Corey’s sole purpose in life centered on one thing: working his ass off, building up a healthy name and a healthy clientele, so he could move the tattoo shop into the city and have the funds to go after her. It was all because of lack of money and lack of alone time together that their relationship had gone sour in the first place. Not that Bekka was the kind of woman to base a relationship on money. Hell, she wouldn’t have stayed with him through the rough years if that were the case. But now he had the freedom to spoil her the way she deserved, and the freedom to be on his own, so he could seduce her back into his arms properly. And Corey was a stubborn man. He wasn’t giving up.
“Hey.” His young apprentice that came with him from Rexton popped his head out of the tattoo room. “What you want for lunch, man? I’ll go out and grab us something.”
Corey draped his leather jacket over the coat rack close to the opening of the tattoo room. “I don’t know what I’m in the mood for, Jamie. Surprise me.”
Jamie, a sinewy kid that Corey dwarfed by a good six inches, looked at him hard. “You okay, man. You seem somewhere else?”
Corey smiled, and Bekka’s mischievous, sparkling eyes floated into his mind. “I’m okay. Just got a lot on my mind.”
“You went to see Bekka, didn’t you?”
Corey looked up into the kid’s sharp hazel gaze. “Yeah, I went to see her. Didn’t stay long though.”
Jamie came closer to the entrance of the tattoo area. He leaned against the doorframe. “So, how did it go? You think—”
Corey held up a hand to stop him and smiled sadly. “It’s too soon to say yet. Give me some time to work on my woman first. Yeesh, Jamie.”
Jamie grabbed his canvas jacket off a hook and shrugged as he continued to snatch a look at Corey. “Sorry to butt my nose in. I just know how it has been for you without her. And I like Bekka. She’s a cool lady. I hope you two get back together.”
And with that, Jamie was across the front of the shop in a flash, out the door, on his way to find some grub.
***
Corey stood alone in the tattoo shop, hands on hips, as he stared at the design sheets on one wall and drifted off.
He thought about the first time he’d seen Bekka. It had been back in a little town in Ontario, where they had both grown up no more than a half hour’s drive from one another. She had been working in a coffee shop/souvenir store while going to university. He’d just got back from physical rehabilitation in Toronto for a severe injury he’d incurred working on a construction site in Guelph.
Juanita took him for lunch almost every day to the coffee shop where Bekka worked. He supposed his step-mom had picked up on his interest in the tall, willowy raven-haired beauty. Back then, as she did now, Juanita encouraged him to go for it.
“She’s cute.” She had leaned over the table and whispered to him. “And she looks like your type, Corey.” Juanita winked and darted a glance over her shoulder at Bekka, now serving another customer in the loghouse style café. “I see a couple tattoos. She’s got a cool moon on her lower back.”
Corey laughed and took a bite of his corn beef on rye. “Look, Mom, I don’t know…”
Juanita held up a hand, interrupting him. “I know, kid. You just got home, and you want to get your head straight before you start looking.”
“Exactly.” He took a sip of his cola. “I just want to get into therapy for this back and get well. I’ll start looking later.” He darted a glance over his shoulder at Bekka and then turned back to his step-mom to wink and raise an eyebrow.
***
Bekka dusted the books on the shelf closest to the door and thought about her encounter with Corey earlier that morning. Were there ulterior motives in his move to the city?
He hadn’t given many hints during their short encounter in her store. He’d kept the conversation general—how was business doing, how was it adjusting to the city after living rurally for so long—for most of his stay.
That is, until he had asked, “So, anyone new in your life, Bekka?”
Her hands had clamped tight on the cover of the Lovecraft book. She swallowed hard then shook her head, not daring words as his piercing blue gaze bore through her.
“Damn me.” She sighed, putting an original Edgar Allan Poe back in its place in the cherry wood bookstand. “Why do I let him have this kind of effect on me, even after two years apart?”
She thought back to their last night together. The night before she dropped the bomb that she was leaving. The big fight that led to a tangle of sheets and raw lovemaking. Bekka shuddered at the memory and her groin pulsed with a desire she thought she’d forgotten.
***
Chapter 2
Bekka locked up the shop at ten o’clock and took a deep breath of nighttime air as she headed for the back steps that led to her apartment above the store. The lights of Moncton had flickered on in a kaleidoscope of warm colors. As her foot lighted on the third stair, a voice, all too familiar, came from behind her.
“Hey, Bekka.”
She froze and stopped breathing for a moment. Turning, she found Corey looking up at her. His hands were in the pockets of his jacket and his breath puffed like a fragile ghost on the chilled March air. A slight breeze caught his wavy, long black hair and lifted it from his sculpted, strong Russian features.
“I can’t find my keys to my apartment.” He came part way up th
e stairs, stopping on the metal plank just beneath her. At six-foot-five, he towered over her in such close proximity. “I called the kid that’s working for me to see if he’s got ’em, but no answer. I’ve searched the shop, but no sign of them. My phone’s dead.” Corey held up a smartphone. “Can I come in and use your phone and warm up?”
Swallowing hard, Bekka smiled at him and ran her hand through her long, straight black tresses. She couldn’t very well deny him entrance to her apartment building. And why should she anyway? Hell, it had been awhile. Two years. If the truth were known, she hadn’t had another man since she’d left Corey. Oh, she’d been tempted a time or two, but when she’d tried to go any farther then a bit of making out, the old heartache came rushing back in like a surging flood.
“Sure.” She nodded and turned her back to him as she continued up the stairs. “Come on in. You want me to put on a pot of coffee?”
***
He spotted her collection of horror figurines reverently placed in a antique china cabinet near the entertainment center. Corey chuckled as his gaze drifted over the Wolfman, Frankenstein’s Monster, Dracula, and her collection from the Evil Dead trilogy. That was his Bekka—a diehard horror fan through and through. She was no pushover, and she had enough fire in her spirit for two people, but his Bekka also had manners and a heart of pure gold.
“Nice to see you are the same ol’ Bekka I always knew.” Corey pointed to her horror figures and she laughed.
“Yup, I still love scary movies, hot rods, and hard rock.” She smiled wide, and the dance of color in her grey eyes took his breath away for a moment. God, she was stunning. Bekka had a face that couldn’t be categorized as “conventionally beautiful.” Her charm, her good looks, came from old-world, almost irregular features—big grey eyes and a soft, cupid’s bow mouth made her a vision worth staring at, in Corey’s opinion.
He joined in her mirth. “You don’t know how happy I am to hear that.” Corey walked over to the couch and sat beside her.
“Why’s that?” Bekka cocked an eyebrow and cast him an almost sassy stare. She was daring him; Corey could see that. Mischievous as always, that was Bekka.
Shifters & Bad Boys Bundle (Shifters & Bad Boys. Man love, bdsm, and rockstar romance. Book 1) Page 38