Summary:

Alice Rose Wild Shannan is the girl every small-town gossip in Alberta loves to misunderstand. At eighteen, with razor-sharp cheekbones, thick dark hair streaked with highlights, and a voice that can peel the paint off a venue wall, she is used to being stared at. People call her cold, arrogant, even a tease. They see the confidence, the eyeliner, the curves in exactly the right places. They do not see the hyper chatter, the naïve sweetness, the way she trips over her own boots backstage and apologizes to every microphone she bumps.

They definitely do not see the girl who still lives at home, who has only ever slept with one boy and pretends it was not a huge disappointment.

On stage she is something else entirely. As the lead singer of Religion, a hungry young rock band made up of the boys she grew up with, Alice is pure wildfire. Her voice is rough silk, her presence impossible to ignore. Religion is starting to buzz, selling out small clubs, catching the attention of industry veterans. Her bandmates worship Nine Lives, the legendary rock group that ruled the early 2000s and never really left the spotlight.

Joseph Alexander Anderson is the voice of Nine Lives. At fifty‑three, with long glossy raven hair, blue eyes like stadium lights, and a body that looks carved rather than aged, he has survived every cliché the rock world could throw at him. Addiction, scandal, tabloid betrayals, the kind of burnout that kills careers. Thirty‑plus years sober, he is disciplined, frighteningly talented, and exhausted in ways no camera ever captures.

The world knows Joseph as the charming sinner who never learned his lesson. The older man who cannot keep his hands off younger women. The veteran frontman who sleeps around, never commits, breaks hearts and writes chart-topping anthems about the emptiness afterward. On stage he is magnetic, reckless, hilarious, always pushing the line. After the shows, behind locked doors, there is nothing left but the hollow ring in his chest and the distant roar of crowds that no longer feel like love.

When a private video of Joseph trashing Religion goes viral, Alice’s life detonates overnight. In the clip, he dismisses her band, scoffs at baby acts who think they can survive the machine, and implies that pretty little frontwomen are easy to market and easier to forget. The industry laughs. Her bandmates shrug, too star-struck to be offended. They grew up learning his songs. They are just happy he knows their name.

Alice is not laughing.

She fires back the only way she knows how: with a stage presence sharp enough to slice him open. She mocks Nine Lives in interviews with an innocent smile, turns her irritation into gasoline for every show, and tells herself she hates him. Hates his arrogance, his condescension, the way his blue eyes look too alive for someone old enough to be her father.

The universe, and their label, have other plans.

Religion and Nine Lives are forced into a joint tour, a high-stakes experiment meant to refresh Joseph’s brand and launch Alice’s. It is a recipe for disaster and a guaranteed ticket to sold-out arenas. Two frontmen, two egos, one tour.

On paper their dynamic is simple. He is the experienced legend. She is the untested upstart. He is supposed to mentor. She is supposed to learn.

In reality, it is volatile chemistry.

Alice is quick-tongued, competitive, reckless with her flirting and unaware how deeply it cuts. Joseph is jealous, possessive, and furious with himself for reacting this way to a girl who should feel off-limits. The more they clash, the hotter their connection burns. Backstage bickering turns into late-night arguments. Petty insults morph into charged silences in dressing rooms. Casual touches linger a fraction too long.

He calls her a child to her face, insists she should find a boy her own age to play with. He warns her that men like him do not settle down, points at his past as proof. She answers with a careless laugh and a glint in her eye, flirting with everyone in his orbit and hiding the sting behind a bright, harmless smile.

For Alice, Joseph is danger wrapped in charm, a fantasy she knows she should not touch. He is also the first man who really sees her as a performer, who talks to her about work, staging, breath control, the ugly machinery of the industry. He recognizes her control issues and her hunger for the spotlight because he has lived them. He pushes her, sharpens her, refuses to coddle her talent.

For Joseph, Alice is a line he cannot stop wanting to cross. She is a reminder of everything he has sworn to leave behind and everything he has secretly been missing. Her sweetness disarms him. Her fearlessness in the bedroom of her own ambition fascinates him. Her easy devotion terrifies him even more than her pout.

The slow burn turns molten the night she shows up at his house, furious and breathless after another fight, and he finally stops pretending that what simmers between them is anything but forbidden heat. There are no substances to blur the edges. He has been clean for decades. Every touch is deliberate. Every command is careful. He is older, more experienced, very aware of how small her sexual history is next to his own. She tells him, with a blush and a joke, how bad her first time was. He promises to show her what it is supposed to feel like.

Their first night together is a threshold. Joseph is patient and reverent, yet utterly dominant. Alice, all bravado on stage, suddenly shy and shaking in his sheets, lets herself hand him the power. He coaxes every gasp from her, teaches her new ways to come undone, praises every experiment of her tongue, and proves that pleasure can be both overwhelming and safe. When it is over he is gentle, pressing water into her hand, praising her in a low voice, his roughness balanced by a softness she has never seen him show anyone else.

From that point, their secret explodes.

On stage they smolder from opposite ends of the bill. Off stage they live in a private world of whispered rules and unspoken devotions. Joseph is naturally dominant, and Alice is eagerly submissive, craving his control. Collars, cuffs, spanking, choking, toys she has never imagined: he introduces them one by one, always with consent, always with a safe word she never uses. Their kink is intense but anchored in care. He teases and punishes her when she breaks tiny rules, often because she is pushing on purpose just to feel his hands. She calls him Daddy without shame when they are alone, and the word snaps every last restraint in him.

Outside their hidden rooms she follows him like a bright little orbiting star, his puppy in boots and eyeliner, treating him like a king with an adoration that feels dangerous. He, in turn, treats her as if she is made of light. He buys her everything she asks for. He watches every set side-stage. He studies her the way he used to study the crowd.

They think they can keep it safely behind closed doors.

Then the world starts watching.

A backstage camera catches Alice flirting shamelessly with Joseph, all wide eyes and wicked smiles. The clip leaks. Fans begin to speculate. Ship names appear online. Interviews get sharper. When she jokes too loudly with one of his actor friends, his jealousy hits boiling point. When his ex, Kaia, a glamorous thirty‑something siren from his past, shows up insisting they are still meant to be, Alice’s insecurities spiral even as she refuses to let them show.

Kaia has history on her side. She is closer to his age, a known name, someone the world expects him to love. She cheated, married someone else, divorced, then crawled back convinced they still belong together. When a moment of weakness and nostalgia lets her steal a kiss from Joseph, Alice sees enough to believe the worst. Glass breaks. Voices rise. Alice swears she can simply sleep with someone else, mentions Austin, her band’s sweet, obvious admirer, as if it would fix the ledger.

Joseph is not innocent. In his hurt and confusion he slips into old patterns: making out with the wrong woman, letting an arm linger around a stranger’s shoulders, using attention as a weapon to make Alice feel exactly what he feels. They lash out, threaten to replace each other, and break apart without ever fully admitting they have become something real.

They never sleep with anyone else. They both imply it, hint at it, use the possibility as knives. The distance between them is thick with unsaid apologies and unfinished sentences. The tour does not pause. Every night they must sing their separate sets for the same screaming crowds, pretending their private war is not bleeding into the music.

The industry takes notice. So do the people closest to them.

Austin, the safe boy who might have been enough in a different life, begins to suspect he is being used. Alice ghosts him rather than confess. Kaia keeps circling Joseph, desperate, manipulative, never missing a chance to remind him that time is not kind to men who cling to girls barely out of high school.

Most cutting of all is Joseph’s older brother Shawn, drummer of Nine Lives and the person who survived every bad era with him. Shawn has finally married, calmed down, and has watched Joseph swear off younger women in private countless times. When the truth about Alice comes into focus, Shawn confronts him. He does not mince words. Joseph is too old, too jaded, too visible. Alice is too young, too early in her career to be tied to a man with his history. Shawn demands Joseph stop, grow up, find someone closer to his age, or at least stop dragging innocent girls into his mess.

Joseph is forced to look at what he has become in the mirror of his brother’s disappointment and Alice’s hurt. He sees not just the player the tabloids write about, but a man who has used distance and detachment as armor for years, now shattered by a girl who stares at him like he hung the moon.

It all comes to a head when Joseph finally drops to his knees in front of Alice, literal and figurative pride discarded, and begs. Begs for forgiveness, for one more chance, for her to believe that whatever started as forbidden fun has become something he cannot walk away from. The apology is raw and unpolished. The make‑up is messy and urgent, all hands and tears and confessions whispered against each other’s mouths.

By the end of this first chapter of their story, their relationship is still a secret to the wider world. Alice keeps it from her parents, unable to imagine introducing a lover who is five years older than her father. Joseph sets clear rules, builds structure around their chaos to keep her safe, and learns, slowly, to live with his own jealousy instead of using it as a weapon.

They are not fixed. They are not finished. They are only at the end of their first year, their first tour, their first cycle of obsession and forgiveness. There are still headlines waiting to be written, families to confront, careers to protect, and a future to negotiate when desire collides with reality.

Wild Religion is the opening volume in a steamy age-gap rock saga, a forbidden enemies-to-lovers romance threaded with BDSM-flavored intimacy, backstage scandal, and sharp, comedic banter. It follows Alice and Joseph through a year of escalating tension, explicit encounters, dangerous power games, and two people who should never have fallen in love choosing each other again and again, even when it hurts.

The ride is messy. The heat is explicit. The emotions run just deep enough to make the pleasure addictive. And their story has only begun.