by Serena Rose
HOW TO DATE
A DRAGON
A STEAMY DRAGON ROMANCE
SERENA ROSE
Copyright ©2018 by Serena Rose
All rights reserved.
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About This Book
Kelsey Long had dedicated her life to studying and had never experienced love.
But her world was turned upside down when she met the handsome and witty William Drake.
On the outside William appeared like any other guy, but the truth was that he was a 100 year old weredragon who had seen and experienced things that most humans wouldn't believe.
Dating a girl like Kelsey was nothing new for William but for Kelsey this was a first and she was worried.
The truth was Kelsey had never been with a man before, let alone a dragon. Would she have what it takes to please him? Or was this relationship set to end in disappointment?
This is a steamy dragon romance that should only be read by adults!
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER ONE
I will not fail to speak of Leviathan’s limbs,
its strength and its graceful form.
Who can strip off its outer coat?
Who can penetrate its double coat of armor?
Who dares open the doors of its mouth,
ringed about with fearsome teeth?
Its back hasb rows of shields
tightly sealed together;
each is so close to the next
that no air can pass between.
They are joined fast to one another;
they cling together and cannot be parted.
Its snorting throws out flashes of light;
its eyes are like the rays of dawn.
Flames stream from its mouth;
sparks of fire shoot out.
Smoke pours from its nostrils
as from a boiling pot over burning reeds.
Its breath sets coals ablaze,
and flames dart from its mouth.
He had this recurring dream of destroying someone he loved. It wasn’t a pleasant dream, of course, and even though he loved that person in his dream, he still ended up burning her into ash, like she never existed at all.
It had started after his first girlfriend, and while heartbreaks were to be expected, he hadn’t allowed attachment to rule over him yet. He had been successful so far, and he hadn’t dated in quite a while. He hadn’t aged in quite a while, as well. How many years had it been? A hundred? More?
Time mattered, yet it didn’t, all at the same time. He had a lot of years to waste, if he wanted to waste it. What else could he do? They had achieved it all, well, his family had. They had unlimited wealth, they could afford anything and everything, and yet they hid, they hid because it was a curse to end up like how they were.
William Anthony Drake VI declared he was twenty-five years old, sometimes he declared himself to be older. Twenty-five seemed like a good number for now. He looked the part, anyway, even though he’d been born in the early part of the 20th century.
He had slept for a good ten hours, slept like a log, slept like a dead man. There was only so much energy one could expend upon shifting, every cell in his body focused on that and that alone. It was a painful process, and he rarely did it, only doing it if he had to.
William had learned to control it, he had years and years of practice for it. And he was one of the few that did it, so it would be too obvious lest he lose control. He could burn the entire county, if he wanted to, he could spread flame and misery to the entire state if need be… but there was no need for it, and living as low key as possible was the ticket to their family’s survival.
Sighing, he rolled out of bed (a bed that could fit a family of four comfortably), feeling like a boulder had hit him. Their kind jokingly called it a ‘hangover,’ that dead and leaden feeling after shifting. He had needed to shift, or else he let his father go amuck in the basement again. He didn’t want to keep him there, but…
He felt the soft, Persian carpet under the soles of his feet. Heavy curtains hung tall, nearing the ceilings, all for much needed quiet and relaxation. It was a stark contrast to the room his father was in, bare of anything flammable, devoid of good bedsheets, even. It wasn’t supposed to be this way, he thought, but is it really in our nature to go crazy?
His father’s age was a mystery to him, but he accepted it; he accepted his father for who he was. His stepmother certainly couldn’t, although she tried. His half-sister couldn’t, and she still tried, and she loved and hated their father at the same time. Was the feeling mutual?
William found himself gripping on the night table, not quite able to stand just yet. He felt himself shudder, and he hated that part, feeling sick and weak. Groaning and grunting, he heaved himself up, and he was adjacent to the mirror now. He stared at himself. He looked pale, his dark brown hair was tousled beyond measure, and his rib looked broken on the left. Well, it was broken. Nothing a few more hours wouldn’t heal, he thought. It was past one in the afternoon, when he finally stood up without the aid of a table or chair.
He opened the door and grimaced, feeling the sun’s rays hit his upper body that was devoid of clothing. His pants hung loose on his hips as his eyes narrowed.
“Sir?” a voice interrupted him.
It took a few seconds before his eyes could adjust to the brightness. He looked sideways to see his family’s trusted butler, Lee Wadsworth, a man in his late forties, holding up a silver platter, with a single hardboiled egg on a silver egg cup, a glass of what looked like a bloody orange juice, and his mobile phone (unregistered number, of course).
“Lee,” he said, groaning. “Ten hours, huh?”
“It’s an improvement, sir.”
“Where’s Natalia? And Emilia?” William asked their butler.
“They took the first flight out for New York, sir, just as-” Lee paused.
William nodded, knowing his stepmother and sister wouldn’t be back until his father would be of sound mind and body. It would take a few days, but they always came back, just like they had done so in the last eighteen or nineteen years. He had given Lee his phone for safekeeping, and he would call them later, once he got his strength back. His voice was hoarse, like he had yelled the entire night.
“How is he?”
“Asleep,” Lee replied. There were other servants, but they only worked a few days a week, scheduled rigidly, with limitations as to where they c
ould do their assigned chores. His father was hidden deep beneath the manor; it wasn’t a dungeon or a prison, but William Arthur V had asked that he be put there during volatile times. The volatile times had become frequent as of late. Perhaps, it was his father’s age, or their fragile state of mind. Shifting took a toll on their human forms and their human minds.
“No help out today?”
“None, sir. I canceled it at the last minute, paid their daily wage, as per agency requirements.”
William nodded, feeling a headache forming, a bad headache forming at the base of his skull. “I need gin. And tonic.”
“Of course, sir.”
“I think I’ll sleep the rest of the day,” he added.
“Of course, sir. Anything else?”
He shrugged. “That’s about it.”
Lee opened the door to William’s room, placing his breakfast on a large, wooden oak table with a paperweight of a medieval looking dragon at the top corner.
“Your gin and tonic will be here in a few.”
William sat down, and he ate in silence. The egg was perfectly boiled as usual. Lee had had countless practice. A man who knew how to make the perfect hardboiled egg or omelet, deserved a good salary. They paid Lee handsomely for his loyalty and silence, in fact, they paid Lee so well that Lee had his own little vacation home in Aspen, with a lovely view of the slopes and the trees that came with the Colorado setting. Their trusted butler had worked for the family for twenty years, and he had seen every crisis imaginable within the family.
William didn’t want to waste sleeping the day away, but there was nothing else he could do. Apart from read, or paint, or swim in the frigid waters- just to get his human form more tired. He could work. Work and do what? Make more money? He wasn’t necessarily attracted to money, not as much as the normal humans. He was attracted to jewelry. Things that weren’t made out of paper, or fiber. That was something in his nature, he knew. He couldn’t help it, just like a moth drawn to the flame. In fact, they had a room full of expensive artefacts, mostly with gemstones, for them to bask in…
He sniffed the air, smelling someone else arrive within the perimeter, inside the house. Lee came in, carrying his gin and tonic on a tray, accompanied by someone else. Their family barrister, Benjamin Condon, stood at the doorway wearing a pinstripe suit, and carrying an expensive looking leather briefcase by his side.
“Benjamin,” he motioned for the man to enter. “Lee, could you get something for Mr. Condon, please?”
“Coffee,” Benjamin told the butler. “Black. Thank you.”
“Black,” William remarked. “Why black, Ben? What happened?” He smiled at the lawyer.
“Your father happened,” Benjamin told him, taking out a few sheets of paper from his briefcase.
“There was nothing out of ordinary with what happened last night. It was controlled well.”
“By you. What if you weren’t around, though?” the lawyer remarked. “I can see you’ve broken a few bones again.” Benjamin’s eyes drifted to William’s ribcage, seeing how mottled and bruised it looked, with bone nearly puncturing through skin.
William looked down and sighed. What else was new? The important thing was that they self-healed. “I’ll be around for a while. Time doesn’t exist with me, in a way.”
“Your father didn’t think so. He had been careful enough to see the need for a will, while you were still younger than you are now.”
“You mean, while my father was still sane in most aspects?”
“You know he still has his sanity intact,” Ben reminded him. “It was one of those moments. Foresight, if you call it.”
“Foresight,” William repeated. “With your help, he gained foresight.”
“The senior Drake has specifically mentioned certain things to keep the family estate intact, in the event of his passing- or yours.”
“And here he was, mentioning to me he intended to live longer than his own father,” William said, mixing gin and tonic water into a highball glass. He looked scornful, annoyed; even. “He’s always been one for dramatic flair.”
“You know he means well.”
“Of course, he does. He didn’t live that long to see his estate go down the drain by his only son,” William said sardonically. “What does it say?”
“It’s not exactly a will for you. It’s for Natalia and Emilia.”
“A will for Natalia and my sister?”
Benjamin Condon nodded.
William found himself frowning. “What does it entail?”
“See for yourself.”
Lee brought in coffee as he read on through the paperwork. It wasn’t thorough, but William knew this was in his mother and sister’s best interests. He was quiet as he read through it, knowing that his sister was to receive a large sum upon their father’s demise, knowing that his stepmother could live comfortably for the rest of her life, provided that she made no mention of her husband’s nature.
“She’s keeping her engagement and wedding ring, that’s for sure,” William muttered, recalling how large the gemstone was, a testimony of her father’s ‘affection’ for his stepmother. She had been younger than he was when she married his father. Now she was past forty, with a nineteen-year-old daughter, a daughter his father had been glad to have. At least she wouldn’t shift into something else; at least she was a child who wouldn’t run amuck.
It had always been the men of the family; only the men were affected by it, cursed by that change. The family line had to go on, however, every time a male heir was produced, the curse continued, the wealth continued, the power continued. It was something every generation had to get used to.
“It’s not like you’d want a wedding and engagement ring,” Benjamin mused to him.
“I don’t. It’s hers, of course. It’s just… he thinks we won’t last? Does he have provisions on what’ll happen if I have a child of my own?”
Benjamin nodded, surprising him. His father had indeed thought things through, in the event of his demise. The family must go on, William knew, but it would go on in his own terms. He didn’t see the need to produce an heir. He had been careful with his manly urges, urges that needed to be acted out upon every few months.
He didn’t date anyone long term. That was how things were, and the things he had seen in all his years of living made him want to shun from commitment, and he wanted it to stay that way for a while, well, at least for the next fifty years or so.
*
She had this recurring dream of being killed by someone she loved. It wasn’t a pleasant dream, of course; it was nothing romantic, and even though she loved that person in her dream, he still ended up burning her into ashes. It had gone on for over a month now. Every few nights, she would dream about it.
She was being too paranoid, wasn’t she? She hadn’t dated in a while, a few years to be exact. There had been significant changes in her life, ones that derailed her studies for a while. She was getting back on track as of late, a scholarship and homage to her roots were in the bag. She was fighting against time, she knew.
Time mattered and she didn’t have a lot of it to waste. Waste not, want not, her father had always said. She had wanted to graduate as soon as she hit the age of twenty-four, yet she hadn’t graduated, and her twenty-fourth birthday had come and gone.
Kelsey Silene Long had been living on her own for a while now, in her studio unit which was about twenty-one square feet, a unit she had been calling home for the past two years. She did not have many people to depend on. She was an orphan in every sense of the word, with her father long gone, and her mother on tenure at a prestigious university in China. Her mother wasn’t distant, but she knew that Amanda Silene could only cope in that manner. Amanda had loved her father greatly, that much Kelsey knew. The moment she was legal enough to live on her own, she bolted out, allowing her mother to teach once more, maintain her father’s legacy no matter the distance between the two of them.
She barely slept, pulling in no more tha
n four hours of sleep earlier. She wanted this, she kept telling herself again and again. Double majors, it sounded lovely, it sounded challenging, and it sounded like something that would have made her father proud of her.
She recalled a joke her cousins made, of her half-Asian heritage. She had a ‘B’ positive blood type, which meant she failed her father already, by not getting ‘A’ positive… yes, how lame of a joke was that? Still she found herself laughing at the memory of her achieving father, and she knew her cousins were only trying to make her feel better in all aspects.
She groaned, waking herself up a minute before her alarm was set to go off. Damn, I could have used that extra minute of sleep, she thought. It was six in the morning, and she quickly shuffled out of bed, intent on getting to work before six forty-five.
Kelsey worked at the college bookstore to help augment her living expenses, she also tutored for wealthy children on the side when she could. She had gotten the scholarship from a 4.0 GPA she had worked on in high school. Her father had been there to see her stride to the podium to give her valedictory address, a moment she never forgot. Had it been seven years ago since his death?
Kelsey stared at herself in the mirror, careful to note that her eye bags had gone from bad to worse. These are the only designer bags I’m ever going to get, she thought. She slipped into the tiny bathroom for a quick shower, placing lip and cheek tint to add color to her otherwise pale face. She sighed, looking at the freckles spattered about on her nose, and spilling onto her cheeks. She had forgotten to buy concealer, she realized. Well, the zombie look could suffice. She was going to assist fellow students, after all.
She ate a quick oatmeal breakfast, and then she slung a messenger bag across her body, taking care to place a beanie on her head to ward off the cold. It was just the first week of September, and she was surprised at how cold the weather quickly turned.
