Sleeping Dragons Book 1: Animus (3 page)

Chapter Four

C
amille’s breath finally steadied and she rested her head back against the solid stone behind her. A narrow band of light seeped in from the crack in the doorway leading to the main chamber, illuminating her boot-clad feet where they rested on the stone.

She could still hear Erika’s low voice asking questions and Kris’s even replies. When she’d followed Erika to the pool, she’d been sure she would catch the two of them screwing, but what she ended up witnessing was so much more interesting. She couldn’t quite process it all. She’d stayed far behind and snuck through the open doorway to the rear corridor behind the dais without them noticing, then stayed in the shadows, listening to them talk. If she tilted her head forward a tiny bit she could see them, and ended up rubbernecking while Kris stripped and challenged Erika to touch him.

Her mind reeled at all the implications, and she was even more eager to get to translating but just needed a breather after watching the two of them together. They hadn’t even come close to having sex, but she’d never seen such a tense, sexual exchange. And when Kris had divulged the secret of the temple, she had to test it herself. She pictured Eben’s broad hand stroking the dragon’s penis and moaned softly while she stroked herself. But the idea that they could all come alive was what thrilled her the most. There had to be hundreds of dragons in here. Most of them were frozen in their native form, but if what Kris said was true, they could all appear like humans.

Her clit throbbed beneath her touch and the familiar surge of sensation made her speed up to reach that crest. Kris was lying, she thought when she got close to the edge. But just before she climaxed, her pleasure hit a wall. Tension pooled deep in her belly, seeking a release but nothing was imminent. She groaned out loud and pulled her hand out of her shorts, smacking it against the stone floor beside her. He was right. As much as she wanted it and as close as she was, there was no way she could make herself come. How, though? Their nirvana belonged to the dragons. What the hell did that mean?

When Camille heard Erika’s emphatic arguments coming toward her, she scurried out the door and back to the throne. At least she knew enough now to know what to look for.

With her pen light and notebook, she crouched down and began translating the characters that were etched into the base of the dais. After a few hours and a set of very sore knees, the truth began to emerge. She made the notes and kept going, forcing herself to exhaustion to avoid the very present issue of how horny she was. Keeping her hands busy was the best means of avoiding what she really wanted to do, and if Kris was being honest it wouldn’t help anyway.

Camille had always admired Erika’s easy attitude about sex and wished she could be that free about it. To not care in the least what people thought to the point it made men’s tongues fall out of their mouths when she walked by. That’s how all the men in their group seemed to behave around Erika anyway. Even Corey, the dark and broody, seemed to
see
Erika for something more than just ‘the boss.’ Camille had seen him assess their leader. Maybe not in an overtly sexual way, but the two had talked and Camille had watched Corey’s expressions. She knew he respected Erika and found her attractive. Like maybe he wouldn’t have joined them at all if he didn’t.

She forced herself to think in the native language while she translated. It was a common ancient dialect, so the act was mindless for her. The pencil was an extension of her brain, transcribing the words as she read them. While she transcribed she could happily daydream about other things. Like imagining Eben doing dirty things to her. His hand stroking that dragon’s cock had aroused her incredibly, making her eager for the end of supper when she could have some alone time to pleasure herself while thinking of him. Then all this happened, and now she was rubbing her nose on the surface of what was apparently a platform that held the throne of an enigmatic leader of an elusive race. The more she learned the more she had to keep translating.

The ritual was the most interesting thing. In particular, the one facet of it that drove her out of her mind with desire. They needed a virgin, and as far as she knew, she was the only one besides Kris. No, she was sure of it. She knew Eben and Erika weren’t virgins… they’d been fucking like bunnies the entire trek. Hallie wasn’t, Camille knew because Hallie had shared a pregnancy scare story with them one night. Dimitri was the only guy who might’ve been, and he’d destroyed that illusion after confessing to having shared a girlfriend once with his twin brother. And Corey… well, you didn’t get to be as worldly and experienced as Corey without having sex.

That left her and Kris, and Kris had clearly been destined for a different role in the ritual. And she knew from her personal lack of experience that she was an appropriate subject.

She read and re-read the ritual until it started to sound like a legal document. Most of the ritual components were obvious. They required witnesses, but the virgin component was different. All it said was “…and a virgin’s blood to anchor the dragons to the earth.” It was very specific to differentiate the ‘virgin’ from the ‘catalyst,’ which she understood was the role Kris was meant to fill. He might be a virgin, but he had no free will if his own words were any indication. The virgin had to have free will and choose her own mate at a random point during the ritual.

Odd, the gender was very obvious in the language, too. The virgin was intended to be a female. The very visual presence of erect dragon appendages throughout the stronghold made that detail a little less mysterious. It gave her a lot of options, she supposed. She eyed the statue beside the throne that Eben had been fondling earlier and stood up abruptly. She walked over to it and crouched down again beside the figure. The dragon sat in a position similar to her own, but with an erect spine, all its weight apparently resting on its hefty tail. Its thighs jutted out parallel to the floor and its wings curled up like twin sails behind it.

She reached out a tentative hand, then paused, looking up into the dragon’s eyes. They might be alive. If they were, she couldn’t just grab him, could she?

“I’m just going to touch you now,” she whispered. “I won’t hurt you.”

She stretched her hand and gripped the solid column of the dragon’s phallus. Her palm hit warm stone and it took her a second to register the incongruity of the sensation. It was stone, it should feel cold, but it didn’t.

“Oh, you’re warm. I wonder what that means.”

It meant more research. She released him and turned back to the text beneath her feet. Why were they so warm? And why did she have an uncontrollable urge to climb on and fuck one of them?

She rubbed her eyes and wished for coffee, but didn’t want to wake the others to make it. She’d just have to power through. The golden shapes of the characters filled her vision when she knelt down again with her notebook and continued transcribing, looking for some enlightenment about the statues and what she’d learned in the corridor. And trying her damnedest not to think about Eben.

Chapter Five

E
ben rolled over in his sleeping bag and stared into the darkness that filled the cavernous reaches above him. His balls ached and his dick was as hard as it had been when the door on the surface opened, giving them admittance into the depths of this place. He’d tried sleeping, but his mind kept wandering to images of Camille’s full, round ass. He rolled over and began stroking himself surreptitiously beneath his covers, trying his best to stay quiet. He fisted his cock and nearly groaned out loud in pleasure after the first stroke. He imagined her blond braid resting along the arch of her spine while she bent on all fours before him, displaying her perfect ass for him. This shouldn’t take long. He’d jerk off, then sleep—his standard procedure during his college days—then maybe dream of Camille talking sweet to him.

Except it didn’t happen. The ache in his balls just intensified, and he still couldn’t come. He hovered on the edge, but no amount of stroking could bring him past it. Something was very wrong with this scenario. He’d never had trouble jerking off. It had gotten even easier since he’d been screwing Erika. She was so dirty she’d given him a wealth of material to masturbate to. But his fucking dick was apparently on strike tonight, which made no sense. He couldn’t sleep like this. Cold showers were out of the question.

Now all he wanted to do was shove his hot cock into something and the urge drove him mad. Frustrated with his inability to orgasm, he threw off his sleeping bag and decided to go exploring to distract himself. There were doorways that they hadn’t opened yet. Lots of them. There were the ones behind the throne that he knew Erika was laser focused on. But there were others, too, all locked. Maybe he could find a way to open some of those locked doors and earn a few points with Erika.

Camille’s pretty ass waited out there somewhere for him to open, too. He shouldn’t go looking for her, but her bedroll was empty so he did anyway. He was worried, he told himself.
I wanted to make sure you were okay,
he heard himself rehearsing in his head. Not
I really want to go down on you.
That was an understatement. He wanted to shove his tongue into every single orifice she possessed. Camille had featured in his fantasies since he’d first met her when Erika assembled their team. But, over the course of the weeks they’d traveled together, he’d become more and more enamored of her—a detail he could never properly articulate to Erika without sounding like a complete pussy. In spite of a generally healthy level of self-confidence around women, he’d been hesitant to approach Camille. Each time he tried, she looked at him like she had earlier that day—like he might just be crazy. He supposed the thing with the dragon cock might have been too much, but damn, she was so beautiful when she blushed like that.

So he kept going back to Erika. Erika wasn’t just his oldest friend, she was also the perfect casual fuck buddy. He wondered if Camille would like having her asshole licked the way Erika did. Fuck, he’d love to do that to her. Even though the mere image of making love to her could satisfy him most nights, for some reason tonight he couldn’t
stop
imagining her in the naughtiest positions. Not just bent over displaying her perfect ass to him, but sometimes doing that with her thighs spread on either side of his face with her pussy poised above his tongue and her sweet mouth wrapped around his cock, or riding him face-to-face with her full breasts rubbing against his chest. The vivid image of his dick buried hilt-deep in her ass flashed through his head, making his balls ache almost painfully. Maybe he should just find Erika instead. She might at least be good for a blow job if he promised to return the favor.

He got as far as the stone dais and stopped, momentarily dazed by the image before him. Camille lay in the center just before the huge green jade throne, sound asleep. She was on her side, her cheek resting on one arm, and her pretty braid draped over her shoulder. Her top had ridden up, and she clenched one breast in her sleep. Her other breast was bare, the fabric of her tank top shoved up above the pink tip of her hard nipple that just begged to be sucked. Christ, he’d do it if he could without feeling like a complete perv. She was too good for him, so pure and naïve and virginal, but with an ass that could halt time. What he wouldn’t give to be able just once to bury his face between those round cheeks and go to town until she screamed his name.

Just a touch, he thought. One touch—she’d never know. His mouth watered and his cock throbbed when he quietly crouched beside her and reached out. The hard pink flesh of her exposed nipple beckoned, the aureole a perfect pebbled circle of vermilion, about the size of a quarter, perched atop the creamy mound of her full breast.

“Eben, I need you.”

He jerked his hand back like he’d come too close to a flame and shoved it in his pocket. He stood and turned abruptly in response to the voice behind him.

“Fuck, Erika. You scared the shit out of me.” He tried not to look like a guilty fool when he turned to face her. Erika glanced at Camille’s half-naked sleeping body and eyed him with apparent suspicion.

“You were about to molest Camille, weren’t you? You perverted bastard.”

“I… what? No, it’s just that… Fuck, I’m horny as hell and you pretty much disappeared tonight.” It was as likely an excuse as any.

She stepped quietly across the dais and surveyed Camille where she slept. Once by the other woman’s side, she bent and carefully tugged Camille’s shirt down to cover her breasts, then gently extracted Camille’s notebook from beneath the sleeping woman’s cheek.

Her eyes scanned the pages of penciled scrawl quickly. “Holy shit, he wasn’t lying. Eben… this place is a lot more important than we thought it was.” She looked up into his eyes, her pretty face beseeching. “We have to wake them up.”

“What the hell are you talking about? Wake who up?”

Erika laid the notebook back down and grabbed his hand. Her dark eyes were wide and excited. She was more excited than he’d ever seen her. With a brief glance he realized how disheveled she was, but it just served to make her sexier. Women like Erika were so good at wearing their fixations like a badge that just made men like him gravitate toward them. Her hair was a tangled mess, her dirty shirt half undone and wrinkled, her breasts almost spilling out from her low-cut tank top, and her nipples were hard little circles pressing against the fabric.

“Dragons, my dear. They are fucking
real
. That statue you were so crudely fondling earlier? Real. Living but asleep. I’ve been walking for the last three hours probably, just trying to figure it all out, but this is the answer.
We
are going to wake them up.”

“I think lack of sex has made you a crazy woman.”

“Sweetie, I’m just as horny as you are, but apparently that’s by design. Kris gave me the scoop. We can’t orgasm unless we’re touching one of them.”

“Ah… one of what?”

“One of the dragons.”

Images of shoving his cock into a stone hole made him crease his brow with worry. “I’m not fucking a rock.”

“I don’t know how it works with the female dragons, but we’ll figure it out. Maybe all they need are facials.”

“Right.” He laughed. “And the idea of screwing a reptile turns you on? I admit I’m as kinky as the next guy, but bestiality? Not gonna go there.”

“They’re not
beasts
. They’re mythical creatures who actually aren’t so mythical after all. Come on.”

“Can’t she come too?” he asked, gesturing to Camille. “I’m sure she’d want us to wake her up to see.”

“No, honey, this is a two-man job. She’s not ready for this, I promise you.”

She led him back to their camp, urging him to silence while she found the camera and tripod stashed in Corey’s gear.

A moment later they slipped through the now open doors behind the dais and into a shadowed corridor. Kris stood waiting by the first of several recessed doorways, his expression eager.

“Kris, you beautiful man, I changed my mind. Let’s do this,” Erika said.

Kris nodded and stepped up to the door, placing his hands atop a pair of inlaid characters and reciting a few words in a language Eben didn’t recognize. The doors swung open and the room inside blazed to life when all the sconces along its walls lit up simultaneously.

“Wow. This looks like some rich bastard’s version of a personal fetish room,” Eben said. The first thing he noticed was the wide altar-like platform in the center of the room with the figure of a naked man chained to it. A very aroused naked man carved entirely out of brilliant red jade. When Eben’s eyes traveled past the platform to the end of the room they nearly popped out of his head.

A lavender-hued sculpture of a beautiful woman rested upon a small bench. Large wings stretched out behind her, making her resemble a majestic bird of paradise. The figure was shapely, with plump breasts and a lovely face. And she had huge, swirling horns that emerged from the top of her forehead and angled backward. Behind the horns, her wings stretched out in pure lavender jade so translucent that the lights behind her made them glow. Coiling tendrils of hair draped over her shoulders trailing down to a flat stomach that culminated in spread thighs flanking her bare pussy.

His eyes rested between her thighs, trying to imagine how much fun the sculptor must have had while polishing it to such a brilliant shine. And shine it did, as though she were already wet and ready for fucking. Without even thinking he gravitated toward her. The shape of her sculpted breasts was just about as alluring as Camille’s had been. He had no qualms about touching this one, though. When his fingertip grazed the smooth purple stone of her nipple, a bolt of lightning seemed to shoot straight through him. He
needed
to fuck her somehow, but how?

“Eben, aren’t they beautiful?”

He turned his feverish eyes to Erika. She’d set the camera and tripod in the doorway and now stood naked beside the prone statute on the platform, wearing nothing but the cord of leather around her throat, from which dangled an ancient jade figurine of a dragon. Her auburn hair had been released from its perpetual ponytail and flowed freely around her shoulders. Her nipples were hard, dusky peaks and her breasts rose and fell with excited breaths. He licked his lips at the glisten of wetness visible between her thighs.

Her hand swept from chest to hips over the contours of the chained man, then slid slowly up along the rigid shaft of the statue’s cock.

“How does he feel?” Eben asked.

“
Amazing.
”

“Let me watch you fuck him.” His beautiful dragon woman wasn’t going anywhere. From this angle he could see the taloned feet of the prone man and the hint of scales on his lower legs.

He stood and walked around to the head of the platform and stripped off his shirt, then his pants.

“Do it, Erika. Climb on and fuck him.”

“Get me ready first?”

“Seriously? You look so lit up right now you’re glowing. Touch yourself. I can already see you’re wetter than the jungle outside.”

She let one hand slide up her stomach and clutch her breast, squeezing her nipple harshly. The fingers of her other hand skimmed through the coarse, roan-colored hair between her thighs and dipped between her lips. His cock twitched in response to the moan that erupted from her mouth when she began stroking herself.

“See, you look pretty ready to me. Give him your best, baby.”