Free Sleeping Dragons Book 1: Animus by Ophelia Bell Page B

be proven true after all? If there really were dragons down there, would they 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 her and placed a large, warm hand on her shoulder. “Need a hand to hold, 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, the anxiety disappeared and excitement returned. It took a lot of effort to maintain a casual pace, her curiosity making her itch to move faster. A hundred steps 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 shone in the light of a pair of larger sconces that flanked the door, the decorations depicting several dragons that 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.”
    “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 fit neatly, the nubs in the door filling in small holes within the disk. Eben twisted it and the door swung open, almost seeming to float on its 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 turned on in the extreme.
    Beyond the door they all paused. Her entire team let out a combined exhalation of awe.
    “Yeah, we kick ass don’t we?” Erika said.
    Eben let out an excited whoop and picked her up, spinning her around. The others cheered and hugged. Once Eben set her down again she took a deep breath and gazed around in wonder.
    The chamber beyond the door was immense, with long, curved walls, white and glowing with recessed lights like the corridor they’d just passed through. The entry led down another staircase to the center of an elliptical amphitheater surrounded by tiered stone benches that extended from the floor to the walls. At the far end was a high dais occupied by a throne elaborately carved out of jade, the translucent grass-green of it reflecting the light of a pair of those impossible lights that sat in two shallow alcoves behind it.
    “Wow, check those out,” Eben said. “Nothing like what we’d imagined they might be.”
    He pointed toward the pair of large, 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 large, erect phalluses jutting up between their scaled thighs. They’d have made interesting guest seats, that’s 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