Animus

The opening displayed a dark corridor lined with smooth, pale stone. Erika reached inside and slid her fingertips across the rock. In spite of the cooler air beyond the threshold, the warmth of the walls sank into her fingertips. Once the door stopped sliding open with a heavy ka-chunk, a series of recessed sconces that lined the corridor began to glow one by one.

“Whoa,” Eben said. “Magic?”

“Engineering, most likely. Old school … I bet there’s a trigger somewhere in that door pocket that lights these up when the door is opened. Hey, Corey!” she called back behind them. “You’ll love these lights. Get up here and document how they work.”

The athletic, dark-haired tech nodded from behind his digital camera. “You got it, boss.”

Erika held her eagerness at bay for the time being. Instead of giving in to the urge to run inside and explore, she took over camera duty for Corey and let him do his job. He diligently tested the air quality and gave her a swift thumbs-up, indicating all was good on that front. The glowing sconces, on the other hand, made his dark eyebrows arch high on his tanned brow.

“It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen,” he said. “They come pretty close to light bulbs, but we both know better than that. Take a look …” He reached a leather-gloved hand into one of the half-moon-shaped recesses. What he pulled out continued to glow when he held it up before her.

Heat radiated off the oblong shape. It was round and bulbous at the lit end, dark and tapered at the end Corey held. The other members of Erika’s team circled around, murmuring in awe while the glow gradually subsided. When it emitted only the brightness of a low-burning ember, Erika reached out a tentative finger to touch it. Heat still lingered in it, but it felt solid, more like a stone than a fragile glass bulb.

“See?” Eben said. “Magic.”

She rolled her eyes and took the odd stone from Corey, her first artifact from the temple. Corey grinned at what she was sure had to be a giddy expression on her face. She certainly felt like a kid on Christmas morning.

“Ready to conquer the dragon temple?” Corey asked with a quirk of his mouth and a wink. The epitome of professional behavior and honorable to a fault, Corey had always felt like the protective older brother of the group. Erika eyed him curiously now. Even though he’d traveled with three very attractive, intelligent—and single—women for months, he tended toward broody and solitary. Not once had he given any hint of flirting, until now.

Dismissing his odd behavior as a side effect of the same excitement that afflicted her entire team, she returned his camera to him, turned back to the doorway, and with a deep breath, stepped into the opening, caressing the pale stone walls as she went. The lights illuminated the translucent stone at a warm simmer, and she could just make out the beginning of a staircase several yards ahead.

“Jesus, this place is paneled entirely in jade.” She paused to study a section of the wall, noting the faint green and gold coloring that threaded through the white stone in amorphous serpentine patterns. Once she reached the end of the corridor, she paused to stare down at a staircase plunging farther than she could see.

“Are you down there?” she whispered into the darkness, her spine tingling in anticipation of what she would find — who she would find below. Every molecule in her being told Erika her dream lover would be there, even though the logical part of her brain still screamed that it made no scientific sense for her to believe it. Still, she wasn’t one to turn her back on a challenge like this. She would trust the evidence — whatever it happened to be.

“You guys ready for this?” she asked the group behind her.

Of course they were ready, she chided herself. But was she ready? So far the place had exceeded her wildest dreams, and she was barely in the door. How deep would it go? What kinds of wonders would she find? And the biggest question that occupied her mind: Would she be able to prove all her father’s research true? If there really were dragons down there — if ~he~ was down there — would he be as intelligent and powerful as her father’s notes suggested?

Too many questions, but she was a scientist. The only thing to do was … Well, fuck. Boldly go, dammit! That’s what you do!

As if sensing her hesitance, Eben stepped up beside Erika and placed his hand on her shoulder. “Need someone to hold onto, babe? This is your discovery. You should be the one to take the first step down. We’re all right behind you.”

After the first step, her anxiety disappeared and her excitement returned. It took a lot of effort to maintain a casual pace, curiosity making her itch to move faster. A hundred feet into the depths, she began taking steps two at a time, impatient to get to the good part. How deep was this place?

Fifteen minutes later, they finally reached the bottom and were faced with an elaborately decorated door. Onyx and gold gleamed in the light coming from a pair of larger sconces that flanked the door. Its decorations depicted several dragons who appeared to be tangled in the throes of mating, but not with other dragons. All their partners appeared human. In the center of the carved coil of bodies was a small, circular depression with a starburst pattern of upraised black nubs.

“What kind of crazy sex dungeon did you bring us to, Erika?” Dimitri asked, his words accented with subtle drawn-out syllables that belied his Greek ancestry. He stifled a chuckle. “Not that I’d complain, but that looks kinky even for me.”

Erika sighed. “Y’know, Dimitri, sometimes I wonder if I didn’t pick the horniest team on the planet. But maybe you guys are meant to be here. All the lore I’ve managed to find suggests that dragons have particular sexual appetites. And I suppose this is our first clue that it was accurate.”

They paused to take pictures and record more for the ongoing documentary they’d been filming. The door was locked, but they were prepared for this one. Eben pulled out the solid gold disk they’d found a month ago in Myanmar and fitted it into the depression. It seated perfectly, the nubs in the door filling inside the small holes within the disk. Eben twisted it and the door swung open, almost seeming to float on invisible hinges.

“I’ve got another hard-on,” Eben whispered in her ear. She elbowed him and he laughed, but she had to admit she was aroused by the way that scent kept teasing at her senses, bringing to mind all the glorious dream images she’d had over the years of red eyes and a tongue that could do wickedly naughty things to her body.

Beyond the door, they all paused. Her entire team let out a combined exhalation of awe.

The chamber beyond was immense, with long, curved walls, white and illuminated with recessed lights like the corridor they’d just passed through. The entry led down another staircase to the center of an amphitheater surrounded by tiers of stone benches extending all the way back to the far walls. At the opposite end from the entry was a high dais occupied by a throne elaborately carved out of jade, its translucent hue reflecting the light cast from behind it.

“Wow, check those out,” Eben said. “Nothing like what we’d imagined they might be.”

He pointed toward the pair of massive white dragon guardians that flanked the throne, and Erika’s eyes widened at the sight. The guardians each rested on their haunches, supported from behind by thick tails. Both sported huge, erect phalluses jutting up from between their scaled thighs. They’d have made interesting guest seats, that was for certain.

“Yeah,” Erika said. “That’s almost obscene, isn’t it?”

He chuckled. “No more than you shoving my face into your wet pussy and telling me to eat you like a starving man ...”

She dug a knuckle into his ribs and glanced around to see who might have heard, but the others were already spread out, scouting the room. Not that it was any secret that she and Eben occasionally slept together. That kind of thing was hard to keep quiet when you shared a campsite with five other people for weeks at a stretch. But she knew Camille had a thing for Eben and didn’t want to rub the younger woman’s face in it. Erika’s relationship with Eben had always been built out of convenience and mutual need. She’d long ago sensed he had a limit that he would hit before she hit her own. He’d been her best friend for years, but he wasn’t the man she was meant to be with any more than she was the woman for him.

The image of those lust-filled red eyes returned to her mind, along with the deep, resonating voice and the touch laying claim to her body. “Mine.” She shivered with an unexpected wave of arousal and looked around, wondering where her dream lover might be if he were indeed in here somewhere. He had to be, the way her body was suddenly lit up.

“Look at those doorways behind the dais.” She pointed at the pair of double-doors that rested deep on either side of the throne. “What do you think is back there?”

Eben shrugged. “The dungeon? The kitchen? What do dragons eat anyway? Pretty virgin princesses?” He glanced at Camille, who was still gaping in awe in the doorway just out of earshot of his joke. “If I were a dragon I’d love eating virgins.”

Eben grinned at Erika, irritatingly confident that she’d appreciate his sense of humor. He walked down the stairs and crossed the floor in long strides, taking the steps up to the throne two at a time with her following close behind.

“I wonder why the throne is empty,” he said. “Usually an elaborate religious display like this would have the object of worship in plain sight.”

Erika countered sharply. “You’re a geologist. What the hell do you know about religious displays? To me, this looks like a place to hold court. Not symbolic. Functional. See the alcoves in the mezzanine?” She pointed at the second tier above them. “I’d bet you anything those lead to more rooms, maybe back into the surrounding structure as well. This place is more than just a shrine, it’s a compound. People—or dragons—actually lived here.” And maybe they still do.

“Well, I guess we’ll have to wait for the experts to say otherwise, huh?” He raised an eyebrow and crouched in front of one of the draconic figures flanking the throne. “They look so real, like they could wake up at any second.”

“Master artisans, I guess.” She walked up to the other statue and stroked the dragon’s snout affectionately, trailing her fingertips over its polished white brows and the curling horns extending backward from its skull. Her fingertips tingled strangely and her nipples hardened against her coarse linen shirt. The texture of the stone sparked memories of her dreams—of the feel of hard, scaled flesh beneath her palms and the huge, red-skinned half-man, half-beast who possessed her body through the night. She had to find him.

The stone was so smooth and warm it would have felt like flesh, if it had any give to it. It was polished to leave no evidence of the maker’s tools anywhere. When she looked over at Eben, he was stroking the prominent stone phallus of the dragon statue in front of him, the lewd gesture instantly clearing her mind of the delicious fantasy she’d been having.

“I can’t take you anywhere,” she said.

“Tell me you don’t want to play with it. They’re all so … anatomically correct. I always wondered what a dragon’s dick looked like. Almost as nice as mine. And it’s so smooth. Seriously, you need to touch it.”

“It’s just a reflection of their virility.” Her heartbeat sped up. Her assessment was accurate from an academic standpoint, but the growing heat between her thighs made her sure there had to be more to these statues than met the eye.

“So erect cocks are only symbolic, is that what you’re saying?”

Erika gave him a sidelong glance. “In a statue, yeah. In you, it just means you haven’t jerked off in a few hours.” She looked pointedly at the huge bulge in his crotch.

“I always have a cock. It’s not my fault if you’re too big a prude to want to touch it,” he muttered.

She scowled at him, knowing he was digging at her for kicking him out of her tent the night before, but she’d been too distracted by their imminent discovery to entertain him. Her plan had been to find that semi-dream state where her fantasy lover existed, imagine the things he did to her in her dreams, and rub out enough orgasms to send herself into a mini-coma so she could sleep through the night without the distraction of another body beside her.

It was unlike Eben to take issue with a night apart, but her sexual interest in him had waned the moment they’d set foot in this jungle. She’d probably taken advantage of his eagerness to please her one time too many. He’d just as soon go hungry when they were in a tiff, rather than come begging to her for sustenance of the carnal variety.

A hesitant throat cleared nearby and they both glanced up. Camille stood fidgeting, her bright blue eyes locked onto Eben’s hand where it still absently stroked the rod of polished stone.

“What is it, Cammy?” Erika asked.

“Uh … um … Do you mind if I start translating?” Camille asked, darting a look at Erika. “Everything is covered with text. Well, almost everything.” Camille’s attention slid back to Eben’s hand on the dragon statue’s cock. Erika narrowed her eyes when she caught the wicked smile on Eben’s face while he watched Camille blush.

“Have at it,” Erika said. “The sooner we find out the secrets of this place, the better, right? The boys can set up camp. It’s their night, anyway.”

Camille nodded and left, clutching and twisting at the end of her long, blonde braid, a nervous habit she only seemed to affect when she was around Eben.

“You’re such an asshole sometimes,” Erika said. “She’s got the hots for you and you keep taunting her like that. It’s not fair.”

He chuckled and let go of the dragon’s penis. “I’d love a taste of her, but I have a feeling she’s nowhere near as experienced as you. I like women who take the initiative.”

“Or men?” she asked, reminded of his excuse after she’d found him entangled with a fellow geology TA named Jared. Eben had been cocky enough to invite her to join them, but she’d been too shocked to take advantage of the opportunity. Later when she questioned him about it, all he’d said was, “He asked.”

Eben shrugged. “Depends on the man, but yeah.” His expression grew thoughtful as he turned to watch Camille bend over to extract a notebook from her gear. “I don’t know … maybe I could teach her something.”

Erika let out a long-suffering sigh. “Behave yourself while we’re here, all right? I can’t have my linguist falling to pieces mid-month because you popped her cherry and she’s too in love to keep working.”

“Yes, mistress,” he said with a gleam in his eye.