Free Sleeping Dragons Book 1: Animus by Ophelia Bell

Chapter One
    E rika always got a little damp between the thighs 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 the 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 a disc-shape.
    The image sent a thrill through her. Hot-damn, we found it! The culmination of her hard years of graduate research rested in the darkness somewhere behind that slab of vine-covered rock. She and her team would be the first to set eyes on it.
    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.” She 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 arousing scent of his heady musk hit her nose and 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.”
    “Dwarves… You’ve been watching too many movies. But I know someone’s a horny bastard,” she whispered, shifting her backside against his obvious hard-on.
    She let him take control of 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 its secrets. It also didn’t hurt that the tall, irreverent blond was very easy on the eyes.
    “Here,” he said, pushing her fingertips into a cleft she hadn’t noticed. She grabbed onto the edge of the fissure and followed it down, pressing as she went until she felt it give. She gasped when the entire face in front of them receded at least a foot and began to slowly shift 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 heard from their parents when they were children.
    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 fantasized ever since about finding the elusive dragon temple her father had always 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 right now. Another was a jade bottle,