Animus

Erika always got a little damp between the thighs when on the cusp of an archaeological find, but this wasn’t just any old pile of ancient bones she was about to uncover. Today her entire body thrummed with excitement. If her coordinates were right, this would be the find of the century.

The vine-covered rock wall in front of her was the final barrier. Her heart pounded in anticipation of what she hoped lay beneath. With passionate rips, she yanked the foliage away to display the elaborate, smooth carving of a dragon wound into the shape of a disc.

In spite of her conviction that they’d finally reached the end of their quest, she glanced back to her geologist for confirmation, itching with impatience.

Eben’s eyes widened and he looked up from the handheld GPS unit. “I just sprung wood, baby,” he said, echoing her own thoughts. “Fuck yeah! This is it!”

Cheers erupted from the group behind them. They deserved to celebrate after enduring an exhausting trek through the remote reaches of the Sumatran jungle to get here, but the true celebration would have to wait just a little bit longer.

“Yeah, but it’s just a wall.” Erika swept her hands over the ridged face of the stone slab in front of her, ripping down more vines as she went. “How do we get inside, assuming there’s an inside to get to?”

Eben slunk up behind her, pressing his tall, muscular body against her back. His hands covered hers while they explored the rock face. The scent of his heady musk hit her nose, and then much lower regions, when she inhaled.

“Maybe extra hands are necessary,” he whispered in her ear. “Those old dwarves could be horny bastards, wanting their stones touched by everyone.”

She let him take over their exploration of the hard surface before them. Eben had an uncanny ability to suss out the secrets of just about any mineral. He also had a particular skill at sinking his rock-hard shaft into her deeper crevices whenever the mood struck them. It was why she’d been so attracted to him during their undergrad years. Post-graduation, she’d kept him around because he was every bit as ambitious as she was to explore the deeper reaches of the world and all their secrets. It also didn’t hurt that the tall, irreverent blond was very easy on the eyes.

But their relationship had shifted since the start of this expedition. Her desire for Eben was rooted purely in necessity. He had always been more than happy to scratch her near-constant itch, but his remedy to her overactive libido was gradually growing less and less effective.

Erika’s drive to find this temple was ever-present during her waking hours, overtaking even that craving for sex. When she slept, it was a different story. The need to successfully complete an expedition and bring back proof she could rub in all her colleagues’ faces was just the surface of what pushed her on.

The source of her itch — the strange dreams she’d endured since she was a teen — had grown more detailed the deeper she dug into the existence of dragons. Now the dreams haunted her nightly with images of a beautiful, virile, red-haired man. One whose voice still echoed in her mind during daylight hours, who promised her the kind of partner she’d had yet to find among even the most adventurous of her fearless friends and acquaintances.

She’d once been convinced it would take an older man to truly satisfy her, but the closer she got to proving dragons existed, the more Erika wondered if what she needed wasn’t even a man at all.

“Here,” Eben said, pushing her fingertips into a cleft she hadn’t noticed. She grabbed onto the edge of the fissure and followed it down, pressing until she felt it give. She gasped when the entire face in front of them receded at least a foot and shifted aside with the rough grinding of stone on stone. More cheers sounded behind them as their team looked on.

“We’re inside!” she yelled, pulling away from Eben and raising her arms up in triumph.

Cool, dry air rushed out, carrying with it a familiar, pungent aroma. Her skin prickled with gooseflesh at the memories that surfaced in response to that scent as much as from the sudden chill of the air.

She’d been dreaming of this place ever since her dad had hinted at a mythical dragon race, spinning bedtime stories that rivaled those her friends had heard from their parents when they were children. Her more sexual dreams didn’t begin until she was older, but they were no less tied to that seed of curiosity she’d cultivated since girlhood.

In retrospect, she believed her father had left his research notes out deliberately to entice her. She’d read them over multiple times from age ten onward, and had fantasized ever since about finding the elusive dragon temple her father had been searching for. All he’d had were small clues, one of which was the tiny jade carving of a dragon she wore around her neck. Another was a jade bottle, empty, yet still holding the lingering, spicy scent of whatever substance it had once contained.

Her father had died wondering, and Erika had vowed that she would continue his search.

The dreams began around the time she graduated from high school, shortly after she lost her virginity and discovered the wondrous pleasure sex could bring. It was like her first real orgasm had flipped a switch in her mind, signaling that her deep subconscious was fair game for some mysterious, otherworldly dream creature to play in.

Erika shivered at the memory, her nipples hardening. At least she could pass the reaction off as a response to the temperature of the air inside the chamber and not her arousal at the memories those scents drew from her mind.