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Chapter Six

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 clung to 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.

Camille’s 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 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 touched herself.

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 forms, but if what Kris said was true, they could all take the shapes of humans.

And according to Kris, the entire team was fated to become the mates of the dragons behind those doors.

The thought that one of them might belong to her made Camille’s blood hum every bit as much as it did whenever Eben looked at her.

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 echoing 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 penlight and notebook, she crouched down and began translating the characters etched into the base of the dais.

After a few hours and a set of 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 toward sex and wished she could be that liberated about it.

To care so little about what people thought that 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, all 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 in a way that suggested maybe he wouldn’t have joined them at all if he didn’t.

She shifted her thoughts into 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, during which time she could happily daydream about other things.

Like 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 practically 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 part about the ritual was the most interesting thing.

There was one facet of it in particular 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 most of the 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, but 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.

” The text very specifically differentiated the “virgin” from the “catalyst,” which she understood was the role Kris was meant to fill.

He might have been a virgin, but he had no free will, if his own words were any indication.

The virgin had to choose her mate from among the Guardians at a random point during the ritual.

That meant she got to pick. She looked up at the pair of huge white jade figures and their enormous cocks and licked her lips.

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 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, and therefore it should’ve felt cold, but it didn’t.

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

It meant more research. Camille 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.