Coven: (A Steamy Dragon Shifter/Vampire Romance) (Dragon Bound Book 1) Read online

  Coven

  Dragon Bound: Book One

  Serena Akeroyd

  Copyright © 2019 by Serena Akeroyd

  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.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  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

  Also by Serena Akeroyd

  Author’s Note

  Pussy cat, pussy cat, where have you been?

  I've been to London to visit the Queen.

  Pussy cat, pussy cat, what you there?

  I frightened a little mouse under her chair.

  Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat is a popular English nursery rhyme from the 1800s. Now you’ve read it, it will make more sense when you encounter it in the book. :P

  Oh, also:

  leman

  n.

  A sweetheart; a lover.

  n.

  A mistress.

  n.

  One who is dear; a person beloved.

  And this is a vesica piscis within the flower of life:

  Phew! Now that’s out of the way… ;)

  This is the first in the Dragon Bound series. This one is going to be a little different than my usual stories. Consider it a bit of a soap opera in book form, one that centers around all the main holidays and the Dragon/Vampire community.

  The next book, LEMAN, follows another mated pair, so this is a standalone romance with a HEA… For those of you who were concerned. ;)

  As always, thank you for your support, and I truly hope you enjoy this light-hearted, holiday romance.

  From me and mine, I’d love to wish you all the happiest of holidays at this special time of year.

  Serena <3

  One

  His tongue slithered through the folds of her sex like a professional.

  A professional who specialized in her.

  He knew exactly where to touch, where to lick, where to flick. He knew where to suck and when to fuck. When to flutter and tease and when to consume and devour.

  He ate her up with everything that he had. He swept her along in the storm. Not stopping until she was lost in the eye with him. Until they were the only people left on the earth, the only ones who mattered.

  And still, he didn’t leave her alone.

  His focus on her clit had her grabbing his head, tugging at his ears, only, she wasn’t sure whether she wanted him to stop or to carry on.

  He drove her insane with want, with need. Made her desperate for completion, for him. Only with him.

  She spread her legs, pushing them apart until the tendons in her inner thighs protested the strain in the best possible way. She lifted her head and watched his tongue, his utterly talented tongue, eat her up like she was a banquet, and he was a man starved of food.

  Watching him was like watching the most marvelous opera. She’d never been so engaged, so focused before. But then, she’d never been the center of such focus either. He made her his universe, and she, in return, made him hers.

  She cried out as he began to lash her clit and, thrusting two fingers into her pussy, began to fuck her, curling the digits up, not stopping until he found her G-spot.

  As she cried out, hollering her orgasm, she felt like weeping, because with the delightful climax, as she’d done for the past two weeks, she woke up.

  The man of her dreams, her dream man in more ways than one, was no more. He was gone, and she was left alone in her simple, solitary bed.

  The thought, for the first time in her two centuries, had tears burning her eyes.

  Mia was not a sentimental woman. She’d reached her position through brute force, a skill for diplomacy sharper than an Olympic fencer’s sabre, and wit so cunning she made even the wildest seem tame.

  She was not a woman given to weeping.

  She was not a woman given to dreaming about a man.

  And yet, here she was. For the dozenth time, her subconscious betrayed her.

  That man, whoever he was, she longed for him like she’d longed for nothing else.

  Her body burned for him. She ached, deep inside. Not just heart or soul deep, but so intrinsically that she didn’t know where the source of this feeling could even be found. And though, upon a night he gave her release, it was nothing to what she knew he’d give her if he were real.

  But he wasn’t real.

  He was a figment of a horny imagination, one captured in dreams because she’d been too busy for the last half a century ruling her coven to look for a lover that would satisfy her rather than piss her off. Her position came with demands on her time, and males had a nasty habit of wanting every second of that precious commodity. Not only that, they tried to use her position against. Could and would use her role as leader as a means of boosting their power within the coven—that was something she would not and could not abide. It was easier to use a vibrator.

  BOBs didn’t initiate power grabs.

  BOBs didn’t moan and whine about her time spent leading the coven.

  But BOBs didn’t suck pussy like a porn star, either.

  She sucked in a shuddery breath and curled onto her side. Tucking her legs against her body, she rolled into a fetal position and tried to tell herself she didn’t need a lover.

  The last thing she wanted was a man in her life. One who thought he could boss her around, take charge of her world.

  Men were too convoluted. They brought with them complications, and at this point in her life, with as many irons in the fire as she had, all with the goal of making her coven as successful as possible, complications were the last thing she needed.

  She juggled balls; she did not caress them.

  Still, as she closed her eyes, trying to tell herself she needed no man, a whisper from so deep down in her being she didn’t know its source, told her that the man in her dreams was no ordinary man.

  He would be no ordinary lover.

  Once again, she tried to shut down those whispers. Only, they wouldn’t let her, and as she fell asleep, she prepared herself for the bombardment once more, for her unordinary lover to reach for her and to claim her as his.

  “Are we really doing this?”

  Mia LeRoche batted her lashes at her assistant. “You got a problem with Christmas, Brady?” she asked, like he’d never made a complaint about the holiday season before.

  Yeah, right.

  Now that would be a Christmas miracle. One worthy of a Hallmark movie.

  On cue at her question, his top lip curled upward, revealing sharp fangs. On anyone else, she’d take it as a warning sign. Well, that or the signal to attack first.

  On him, however, it was just loathing for anything festive. The man made the Grinch look cheerful around the holiday season. Not that she blamed him overly, not with his past, but it did make him a pain in the ass once Halloween was over. She had to deal with over two months of him bleating—it was a true Christmas miracle that she didn’t attack him.

  “It’s a ridiculous human tradition. It doesn’t even make sense,” Brady growled. “Jesus wasn�
��t white. I mean, he couldn’t have been. He was Middle Eastern. And he was born in like February or something. How is that even accurate?”

  She snorted at his disgust. “Does it matter?” It wasn’t even their holiday. Vampires didn’t do Christmas. Not unless they owned a bar and took advantage of the season to make a boatload of cash before the New Year lull.

  “Yeah. It matters. If they’re going to rip some pagan festival off, at least do it fucking right.” He pouted—literally pouted.

  If she was the kind of person who said things like, ‘FML,’ then this was one of those moments. Especially because she actually liked Christmas. It hadn’t really been a thing back when she was a kid, but now? She took full advantage and used her businesses as a means of expressing her appreciation.

  If her housekeepers saw a Christmas tree in her rooms, that would cause a stir among her people. But in a business with humans as their main clientele? They couldn’t say shit, hence the decorations in her club that would make Santa’s grotto in the North Pole look miserly.

  Of course, there was always someone to spoil things. In her case, her assistant. Brady was trying, but he had her back. In this life, there wasn’t much else one could ask for in a companion. Still, that didn’t mean she had to cut him any slack so, deciding to be difficult to piss him off, she threw fat onto the fire and admitted, “Well, I like it.”

  He grunted. “You just like the pretty lights.”

  She chuckled as two of her bartenders, two daywalkers who would look mighty fine in her bed if they didn’t come with strings attached, draped lights around the bar in front of them. As she appreciated the view of two sets of tight buns and biceps that bulged, she murmured, “Maybe. But you can have them all year round now.”

  Brady grimaced. “Travesty. They’re not even loyal to the person whose birthday they’re supposed to be celebrating!”

  Because string lights were what Christmas was about? What kind of logic was that?

  “Jesus wept, you’re a fucking joy to be around tonight. What’s got your goat?” she snapped, thoroughly aggravated by his contrariness. He thought he had it bad? If he had to deal with orgasms from a phantom lover whose cock she was beginning to crave worse than a junkie needed crack, then he’d really have something to whine about.

  “I’m always a ‘fucking joy’ to be around. I’m offended you’re only just realizing this,” he sniped back.

  “Oh, I’m not, you’re just worse than usual tonight.” She shot him a saccharine sweet smile to which his sole answer was yet another grunt. Though he was usually a pain, she quite liked him that way. Before him, her previous companion had been far too cheerful. To be around such a joyful countenance only made her feel gloomier. In an attempt to be patient, she appeased, “Bad day?”

  Brady was a daywalker. Born of a human mother and vampire father, he had the best of both worlds. Could walk in the sunlight, didn’t need blood to eat, and didn’t have to sleep. Plus, ya know, chocolate. But he was mortal. He wouldn’t live past a hundred, unless he had help.

  Mia, on the other hand, product of two Vampire parents, would live until she decided to walk into the sun. Or someone decided to push her into it.

  She didn’t intend on pissing off someone enough to murder her, but when you lived a long time, pissing people off was surprisingly easy.

  Daywalkers made great companions for nightwalkers. Brady had been with her for forty years now. He was her assistant, making sure everything ran smoothly during the day while she slept, as well as being her dinner.

  The blood exchange kept him young. It also kept him loyal to her; if he wanted to live longer than his body was capable of, he needed her as much as she needed him.

  It was a fair exchange of power.

  His presence in her life was a huge matter of trust. She trusted him to protect her and her world. He had to trust her to keep him alive. Daywalkers didn’t like to feed just anybody. They were surprisingly tight-fisted with their blood and who they shared it with. Courting Brady had cost her a small fortune back in the day—he hadn’t been a cheap date.

  In the grand scheme of things, nightwalkers were more powerful than daywalkers. They were the ones who wielded all the power, especially in the covens, but daywalkers also had their place and their own importance. Underestimating that had cost many a leader their position at the top of the tree—Mia would never be so foolish.

  A moan of pure distress escaped her companion, prompting her to switch her train of thought. “Not more of the damned things. Think of our carbon footprint,” Brady whined as more bartenders appeared, carrying strings of red, green, and white lights, which would flash when plugged in.

  “You didn’t think that tree was going to stay bare, did you?” she asked with a grin, eying the fir that she’d stacked in the middle of her nightclub.

  Three floors high with a mezzanine landing, the tree was tall enough to peek up to the third story where the VIP section lay. She had no idea how they were going to top it with a star, but she could leave that to her staff. If someone had to play Tinkerbell, she’d give them a bonus for ingenuity. While she could lift the fir one-handed, growing wings was not part of a nightwalker’s repertoire.

  Seeing other wait staff appear with boxes, which had arrived from her epic online shop, she clapped her hands happily. “They arrived.”

  “Nearly a thousand baubles. What a waste of funds,” Brady groused, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

  She shot him a look, pushing some of her power into it. “Since when do you question what I spend my money on?”

  He flushed, and his eyes flared wide as he instantly backtracked, “I meant no harm.”

  “I know,” she told him brightly, but the point was made. She granted him a lot of leeway. The last thing she wanted was him terrified of her; he was a part of her life from waking to sleeping, which meant that friendship was a must.

  Otherwise she’d kill him.

  And she wasn’t speaking in euphemisms, either.

  Gone were the nights when a nightwalker could turn Dracula on their daywalker’s ass, but as he got older, he got grumpier, making it incredibly difficult to hold her patience when it came to the comments he made on things he didn’t agree with—which, because of his temperament, numbered in the thousands.

  Just because she tolerated some of his remarks, didn’t mean she tolerated them all, and sometimes she had to make that known.

  Men.

  It didn’t matter if they were of a Vampiric line or merely human, none of them thought with the brains they were gifted with.

  With all her purchases in the hands of her staff, and knowing she could leave it to them to handle the decorations, she did a quick 360 and checked on the status of the club for the night.

  Peering at the bar, Mia saw the stock was topped up correctly, and a quick glance showed the DJ was setting up his station. She looked at the sparkling clean dance floor and seating areas, and knew from an earlier inspection that the second and third floors were equally as polished.

  Coven, the club not her people, had an old school opulence that had been new school back when she was born.

  Rococo styles played with Louis Quinze features to create a nightclub with a design that was more fitting of an opera house than somewhere that had become famous for its EDM beats. Still, the opulent design matched the opulent cover charge, and in Manhattan, that and an Instagram-worthy selfie was what mattered the most.

  Mia, ever savvy, kept things old school but modernized aspects of the dancefloor, and every quarter, created several backdrops for people to take selfies. With Christmas, there was an area that would soon look like Santa’s grotto complete with elves who were more like models than the tiny pixies advertising agencies had made famous back in the Fifties.

  The models were a part of her coven and the nightwalkers fully expected to be felt up by the clientele—she was under no illusion that some of her people would use their role as a means of finding their dinner for the e
vening.

  There was another nook that had thousands of crystals hanging from the ceiling, and with the strobe lights and a camera flash, the pictures reproduced were quite marvelous.

  With blood red walls, gilt moldings, parquet floors that despaired the current trend of über high heels, and the mezzanine landings, Coven was in a class of its own. A class that she had built with her own two hands, one that shored up her coven’s resources. Seeing years’ worth of hard work come to fruition in the club’s success, pride filled her. Pride and smugness. Covens were rarely entrusted to females, only the strongest reached the top, but she’d proven herself a thousand times over and this place had helped ensure that.

  Money talked, after all.

  Humans or Vampire, money made the world go around.

  When she was certain that everything was in its proper place, or would be soon enough, she nodded to herself.

  “We’ve only got two hours to decorate, people,” she called out. “Do me proud.”

  On the receiving end of a heap of ‘yeps,’ and a shit-ton of bows at her parting, she spun on her heel and headed toward the Admin-Only area, where there was an entrance to her private quarters, Brady at her back.

  His break was approaching, which meant it was time for dinner.

  She’d bought the warehouse in the Tribeca area back in the days when slaughterhouses had been on every corner. She’d made a lot of investments that hadn’t made much sense over the years, ones that had male Sanguen sneering at her decisions and logic, but she was reaping the benefits now.

  Half the warehouse she’d dedicated to the nightclub. The other half was her home, as well as quarters for loyal staff who lived with her.