Bond

Forbidden Desires, Book 2

By: Piper Scott, Virginia Kelly

Narrated by: Michael Ferraiuolo

Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins

Publisher's summary

Adorably naive and shockingly brilliant Harrison Lessardi only needs two things in life: his pet iguana, Steve, and his undying love of science. That is until he witnesses his best friend lay eggs, and a third must-have strolls into his apartment - the sardonic and mischievous Everard Drake.

Everard Drake, celebrated doctor of the tremendously wealthy Drake family, has one goal in mind when he arrives at the scene of his youngest brother’s latest disaster: incinerate Harrison Lessardi. Unfortunately for Everard, the moment he spots Harry, incineration becomes an impossibility - he must have the gorgeous beta as his own, even if it means holding him captive on his estate.

But something else lurks behind Everard’s interest in Harry - something that tugs at Everard’s soul in impossible ways, and that will send Everard and Harry down a rabbit hole of discovery that will change the world as they know it.

An alpha and a beta can’t share a bond.

Can they?

Bond is a 78,000 word steamy omegaverse mpreg-ish romance that will leave you in stitches. It contains an unexpectedly consensual kidnapping, giant magical lizards, an iguana with a full wardrobe named Steve, never-ending nicknames, and a HEA that may, or may not involve mosquito nets. For maximum enjoyment, Bond is best heard following the events of Clutch.

©2018 Piper Scott, Virginia Kelly (P)2019 Piper Scott, Virginia Kelly

SwEeT, HoT & FuN

I love this series and especially this book! It’s imaginative, funny and full of love! Bravo to the writers and Michael Ferraiuolo should win a SAG-AFTRA award for his performance!

Magic Dragon Spunk, a Crumpet, and a good laugh

Meatball, Plum Pudding, Chick Pea, Dumpling, Lamb Chop, Mellon Ball, Veal Cutlet, Tater Tot, Kumquat, Crumpet, Popsicle…

To say that Everard loves nicknames would be an understatement. Some guys use sweetheart, and baby – Ev uses food. Made me hungry. Well, except chick pea. Ick. But I digress. Ev’s nicknames for Harry are adorable because, almost from the start, there is real affection there. After all, Ev’s mission is to incinerate the little Beta, but he’s so taken by the guy that he brings him home – iguana Steve and all. Bond is the second book in the Forbidden Desires series by Virginia Kelly and Piper Scott. It takes place at the same time as the first book Mate, so some of the scenes are identical, just told from another character’s point-of-view. Sometimes I find this annoying but these books are so well-written and creative that I was eager to return to my favorite scenes.

Have I said this book was funny? Like laugh out loud funny. Like snort Diet Coke funny. So, warning – don’t drink soda or eat food while listening. The concept is clever, the execution is brilliant, and the dialogue is snarky. Oh, the beautiful snark.

And there’s Harry. He’s the roommate of the omega Iggy who just delivered three dragon eggs and has been spirited away by Alistair, a dragon. Everard, Alistair’s brother, is left to clean up the mess of the spiriting away – specifically the witness. When Harry discovers Everard is a dragon, the interrogation (also known as verbal diarrhea) begins:

Are you more like a serpent dragon or are you shaped like a dinosaur? Can you perform self-fellatio? Do you use your, uh, hand, claw…paw? Do you have tiny arms like some dinosaurs had? Is that why you won’t show me? I won’t make fun of your tiny arms, I promise, not even if you have itty bitty hands too. No matter what you look like, I’m sure you’re beautiful.

Just one of MANY examples of Harry’s innate curiosity.

I love Harry. He asks many of the questions I would love answered and a few I never would have thought of. He’s naïve and a little unschooled, but he’s a quick learner, much to Everard’s delight. But things aren’t all roses and chocolates because the dragon counsel is not going to like an Alpha Dragon mating with a Beta Human. And then more is discovered about Harry’s parentage. Well, all hell breaks loose. I won’t give away anything more because, frankly, the twists and turns are a good portion of the fun.

In case you couldn’t tell, I adored this book. I love good snark and when accompanied with a strong plot and amazing characters, you can’t help but have a great story. I have book 3, Mate all cued up and plan on listening to it next.

Of course any praise for this audio must include a huge shout out for Michael Ferraiuolo. He is the perfect choice. He has a great accent for the dragons that is imperious and dominating. His voice for Harry might be annoying to some, but it is so perfect for the little Beta who just wants to understand the world around him. This book was a joy to listen to and I’ll watch my Diet Coke consumption in the next audio.

Love the Nicknames

I absolutely loved this book. With Harry and his million & one questions mating with Ev and all of his food nicknames for Harry, it was so funny throughout.

Everett and Harry!

Narration: This series is my first experience with Michael and I love love love his narration. There are a lot of characters and they’re all easily distinguishable. With the emotion in his voice, I truly felt like I could see this book and that it wasn’t just a reading. I like the audios of the series even more than reading the book myself because Michael does such a fantastic job. I’ve actually listened to this audio several times and it’s one of my comfort listens!

Story: This book has such an entertaining plot that fits Ev and Harry perfectly. No spoilers, so I’ll just say that I both laughed and wanted to smack Ev for messing with Harry. But in a way things backfire on him in what ends up being a good thing. I also love that Ev falls head over heels for Harry and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. His hard heart melts when Harry is with him. It’s precious! You can tell that Harry has always been an outsider and he finally gets someone who essentially worships him.

We get a little time with Nate in this one and a fair amount with Perry and his clutch. I adore Perry! And having already read his book, he’s one of my favorite characters ever. I also love how protective his babies are of Harry and how much they adore Harry. For someone so fascinated with reptiles, Harry is literally living his dream and you can’t help but love that for him.

Highly recommend and this is probably my favorite of this series. I just love Ev and Harry’s dynamic.

My personal favorite

The second book of The forbidden desires series starts back at the beginning of book 1, almost. Normally I would hope or a shift in time line like that but it's completely understandable and done well. This one is also my personal favorite out of all three books. I absolutely love Everard. He's still hands down my favorite character.

The writing duo picked up where they left off in their, from a reader standpoint, easy collaboration. Some co-writes you can tell the difference between styles and it's detracting from the overall story. In this case the second book is even smoother than the first and it's a testament to how much work Kelly and Scott put in to make it seem absolutely seamless.

Michael again brings his A-game and boy is it ever a double or even triple A game. The added accents and inflections that were needed for this one did not make him falter. Dialogue created for Everard is so memorable and unique and Michael brought him to life flawlessly. There really isn't a mystery on why this one is my favorite.

Love love!! 5 stars!

This is such an awesome book but Michael made it super good! I loved his voices! Highly recommend!! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

so good I love this series

The narration is perfection, the story is beyond perfection. I can't help but laugh and love every chapter.

Harry and Ev are Funny and So Sweet Together!!!

Surprising - very well done - Michael Ferraiuolo is an amazing narrator bringing Dragon Everhart and his accidental Beta/Omega to life and you'll laugh, you'll be intrigued from page 1. At first I thought Everhart was kind of a putz, but it was obvious, he was used to being the old grump in the family and secretly started changing inside from Day 1 of getting to know Harry. Harry is goofy, quirky and talks way too much - but is so endearing - got into this smart, witty series - Piper and Virginia really do an amazing job with this series and as a voracious reader, listener, I have absolutely loved this book and Clutch - absolutely riveting and entertaining and endearing from beginning to end - each one and I'm begging Piper and Virginia to Get us the Next Book, with Nate's Brother Matthias Boudreaux MATE narrated by Michael as well! He does spectacularly with so many different voices - and emotion. I absolutely love how he brings these characters and the humor to life. Thanks for a different romantic series that has alot of heart and fun!

- 4 to 4.25 stars -

This would be my second time reading/listening to this book. I would say this is a pretty good book with little angst and conflict. A lot of my questions I had from the previous book had been answered in this book.


*Spoilers*
I think my favorite part in the whole book was the moment Everard's father asked Everard why the iguana was dressed as a shark. It was just so funny and the way the narrator said it made it even more hilarious. Harry is a very interesting character with the way he can go on and on about different things, but he also has a very big heart for the things and people he loves. He is also very smart and I'm honestly surprised that no one else had figured out what he did about dragons. I think he may be my favorite character so far with how interesting and loveable he is.
For some reason I had thought that after Harry had told his discovery about the Disgraces actually being dragons, that Everard's father or Everard would apologize on behalf of all the dragons for how Harry's father was treated. But that did not happen. Hopefully Harry's discovery will cause a change in how the Disgraces and the Pedigree are treated.
I am a bit surprised that Everard isn't exactly close to his father. Or at least his father doesn't seem to be very close or very paternal towards his own children. It had been mentioned that his father gets worried about Alistair, but I think it's the same worry all of Alistar's brothers have. It was made even more obvious that Everard's father is missing something paternal or even the knowledge of how to love someone when you look at the scene when Darwin hatches. He was rather critical with stating how small Darwin was but basically congratulated Everard. Besides that, his behavior was very....materialistic or political or cold or standoffish. I can't come up with the right word for it. When comparing his reaction to Harry's parents reaction to Darwin, Harry's parents are lot warmer, loving, and will probably be very close to Darwin compared to how Everard's father acted. I hope we will see character development with the leader of the Drake clan since he has his own book, but I do find it sad that it might mean he won't fix his relationship with his children by showing fondness or any other sort of warmth since they are all adults with families of their own. But who knows. Everard was able to start being a bit kinder to other people so maybe his father will learn something in his book as well. I'm think his standoffish behavior towards his children is probably due to the fact that the mother of his children was not his true mate and he probably had betas take care if his children instead. It also could be because he is the leader of the clan and being business like is the only thing he knows how to be.
I also wished Everard could have deepened his bond with Alistair. In book 1, Alistair mentioned that he was closest to Everard out of all his brothers, but I wish we could have been shown some brotherly love without name calling or being judgemental, which Everard seems to have a tendency of doing. There was actually hardly any mention of Alistair throughout the whole book since some of the events overlapped with book 1 and Everard was busy with research and Harry.
I am interested in what order they were hatched in as Sebastian is the oldest, I'm guessing Everard is the second oldest. Alistair was mentioned to almost be a dud and hatched a few minutes after Everard since I think Everard liked to gloat about being older or something in book 1, so Alistair might be the third oldest. Geoffrey was called little brother by Everard so he is also younger than Everard as well. For some reason I figured Alistair would be the youngest since his egg was almost a dud, which I took it as it meant that his egg took the longest to hatch, but who knows what they meant by that.
I did find it funny that people kept calling Everard and then his son pink and then Everard was always insulted by it and stating that he was Byzantine and Darwin was Orchid, and clearly not pink, when in reality they really do have pink scales and he even stated it to himself.
Another thing is that I am hoping that Everard will find out about Geoffrey's love interest and the reason as to why Geoffrey was so upset and not himself. The reason as to why I want him to be one of the first to discover it out of the brothers is because I think he would actually be supportive about it with everything he went through with Harry. And he does seem to genuinely care about his brothers despite everything he has said about them. I honestly don't know if they are exactly close or if any of the brothers are really close, but I hope there can be some brotherly love between some of them. I don't know if a relationship between two alphas - and especially between two dragons from the Amethyst and the Topaz clans - is particularly forbidden or unheard of, but I hope someone can be supportive of them. I know Everard had said to Harry that two alpha dragons wouldn't fall in love or be together, but he didn't elaborate on it. I would imagine that Geoffrey and Ian's relationship wouldn't be looked kindly upon, but I'm not sure exactly why that would be. It seems to be the dragons main goal is to have as many children as possible, and since two alphas in a relationship won't result in a clutch, then that might be a reason as to why it might be frowned upon. But other than that, I can't think of any other reason why other dragons would be against it. But there clearly has be some reason as why they would hide their relationship since no one else knows about it. Everard did seem to notice something since Ian kept staring at Geoffrey during the hatching and seemed really unhappy, but I don't think he really put two and two together to realize what exactly was going on. Hopefully their book won't be too stressful and I do wonder if two alphas can have a mate bond.
I do wonder what it is with Everard and names. He has nicknames for Nate that relate to animals, he calls Harry all kinds of food nicknames along with his full name and shortened version of his name (Harry), and then he calls Darwin either Charlie, Chuck, or Chuckles, and only really calls him by his actual name when the situation calls for it or when he feels like it. No one has asked him why he does or really complained about it, except for Nate. Harry doesn't mind it it seems unless he's experiencing morning sickness. All the brothers also have shortened names for each other as well.
Another question I had is if magic is so hard to learn and is supposedly meant more for dragon omegas than alphas, then how is Everard so good at it? Alistair can also do some magic as well. Is Nate able to use magic? How are dragons taught how to use magic? Why are some dragons more proficient at it than others?
Will they bring Alistair up to date on what is currently going on and about Harry's discovery and why he was able to lay an egg? I felt bad for him when he started asking questions and no one was answering and that they kept him in the dark.

*Narration*
I really enjoyed Michael Ferraiuolo's narrative as it really heightened my enjoyment of the book. I did read and listen at the same time so I did notice that for some reason in the beginning when all of Everard's brothers was mentioned, was that one of them was called Frederick, when his brothers name was not actually Frederick and started with a B. That only happened once.


Overall, this was a good book and I would recommend it for the same reason as I did for book 1

Amazing !

The ever best series that has it all, it's funny, curious, sexy, hot and it's amazingly narrated.10 over 10!!!