Monthly Story - male gargoyle x f. human (3rd person, nsfw) (Patreon)

I said on Discord that this was a bit different in terms of style from my usual one, and it starts off with a bit more 'background' to cover the 'childhood friends' part of the 'childhood friends to lovers' in the story... I hope you enjoy it all the same though. I've got other ideas for this setting for the future if you do, but I'll let you tell me what you think in the comments.

Content: childhood friends to lovers, solid group of friends, passing mention of a couple unable to conceive, off-screen parental death, adopted by kindly uncle, going away to school/boarding school and university (everyone's an adult for the nsfw bits).Nsfw: teasing, edging, quite a lot of swearing, mention of giving oral, and some penis-in-vagina sex.

Wordcount: a whopping 10,938!

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As a very young child, when she’d been brought for that fateful Christmas visit to her uncle’s remote, sprawling mansion in the north of England, she’d thought that the dark row of elms looked like the charred ribs of a giant half-buried in the earth. 

Even the name of the place had scared her: Wych Grove Manor. 

The dark elms flanked the interminable, dusty, winding road through the remote estate, from the gatehouse guarded by its snarling gargoyles right up to the sweeping expanse of gravel with the fountain out the front and its horrific looking, twisted monsters that spewed water in foaming white streams from open, sharp-toothed maws. 

At the age of five, she’d been terrified of the whole place. Her father had scooped her up into his arms and carried his frightened daughter up the stone stairs into the gothic home of his older brother. She’d been too young to understand much of the conversation that had followed between the adults in her uncle’s study, but she’d understood enough. 

“I’m sorry, James,” her father had said. “I know you didn’t want children of your own —”

“— that’s not strictly true, Richard,” her uncle had countered gently from behind the mahogany desk, fingers steepled as he regarded his younger brother from behind gold-rimmed spectacles. 

They had the same eyes, she’d noticed, swinging her legs from the edge of the enormous, green leather chair in which she’d been unceremoniously deposited by her father while the adults talked. 

“Maria always wanted children, but I thought I wouldn’t have the time or the energy needed to dedicate to a child with my research. By the time we decided to try, it was too late for us anyway.”

“It’ll just be for Christmas,” her father had said, pacing on the Persian rug that spread like an ink-spill from a thousand different bottles under the desk and out over the complicated, interlocking patterns of different types of wood in the floor. She’d been fascinated by them, and had only learned later that the inlay in the floor formed a protective symbol against demonic forces. To a five year old’s eyes, it looked a bit like a flower, though most of it was hidden by the rug. 

“This really is no place for a young child though,” Uncle James had sighed. “I have no one to entertain her or care for her properly, Richard. It’s just me here, with Ana coming a couple of times a week to clean. And with my leg, I fear I won’t be able to keep up with a child.”

“I know, but she’s a good girl, and she’ll be safe here,” her father had insisted, glancing pointedly up at the ornate plasterwork on the ceiling. 

She’d looked up too then, and seen more dizzying patterns. 

She’d been so captivated by them that she’d jumped when her father had knelt before her and squeezed her little forearms arms gently in his hands. “Sweetie, you’re going to be staying with your uncle here for a while, ok? There’s something I have to do, and I’m not allowed to take you with me. You’ll be taken care of, but you must be a good girl and listen to what Uncle James tells you, alright?”

The rest of that afternoon had faded into a blur, but her father had never come back for her. 

A month later, with his eyes still red from crying, Uncle James had told her gently but honestly that her father had died on his travels, and that he was her legal guardian now, and that they must muddle along together as best they could. It would be just the two of them now in that vast and ancient house. 

Except, it wasn’t. 

Not at all.  

They were just the only fully human occupants. 

In time, she would come to learn that Uncle James’ house played host to all sorts of strange and exciting creatures who came and went at James’ say-so, from vampires and dhampirs to witches and werewolves, but one day, outside her cosy, attic bedroom, she met her best friend crouching on the stone balcony. 

Small in stature, and a pure, glittering white like the first, untouched snowfall of winter, the creature had stubby little wings and a chubby face, and paws that were too big for the rest of its frame, a tail that was too long to be at all in proportion, and two nubby little horns on top of its head. It had a muzzle a bit like a lion, and big leonine eyes, but the shoulders and torso and upper thighs were those of a squishy, human boy. Its lower legs were feline again though, with paws instead of feet, and around its waist it had a carved skirt of cloth. 

When the stone statue had first appeared, she’d thought it was a gift from her uncle. After all, he’d told her bedtime stories about the gargoyles that roosted on the mansion’s roof and kept their home safe from anyone who’d wish them harm. So she’d run straight to her uncle’s study to thank him for giving her her own guardian the moment she’d found it sitting there after her day’s homeschooling was done.

He’d frowned, his dark eyebrows pulling together, and he’d risen stiffly from his seat behind his great, mahogany desk, and smiled at her as he reached for his black walking cane. 

“What do you mean, Little Leaf?” he’d asked. He’d called her his Little Leaf because she was always blowing about the mansion, seemingly on the winds of whimsy, tumbling around and going wherever she pleased. She had flaming auburn hair too, so sometimes he called her his Autumn Leaf. 

“The gargoyle!” the six year old had exclaimed, jumping up and down. “I got my own!”

Chuckling but clearly intrigued, he’d said, “Why don’t you introduce me properly then?”

The evening light had glanced off her copper hair as she’d spun around and tugged him through the warren of his own home, all the way up to the attic. He’d given her the option of one of the grand, spacious bedrooms — even tried to put her in the pink bedroom in the south wing when she’d first arrived a year earlier, but she’d wailed and cried and hadn’t slept properly for a week solid. 

She’d found the attic bedroom after slipping away from her workbook one day to explore, and he’d searched the entire house for her in a near-blind panic, eventually finding her curled up on a pile of dust sheets, exhausted but seemingly utterly content at last. He’d moved her in that very night, and she’d slept there peacefully ever since. 

So when she’d yanked him through the slope-ceilinged room and out onto the balcony in the dusk light, he’d drawn up short, stopping so quickly her tiny hand had been dislodged from his grip, and she’d toppled forwards. She’d grabbed hold of the statue to keep herself from going down completely, and had scuffed her palm on its rough shoulder. A little of her blood had marred the pure white surface and she’d stared at it in horror. 

“Oh no!” she’d yelped, whipping around to stare helplessly at her uncle. “Quick! Get some water!”

But no matter how her uncle had scrubbed at it for her with his handkerchief, the mark hadn’t come off. 

“Where did you come from?” James had murmured to the small statue as the sun sank lower and lower. “I didn’t know my gargoyles had enough magic in them to… well… breed. They don’t even seem to come to life anymore after sunset.” 

The small child had heard how sad he sounded, and went still. “Come to life?” she’d breathed. “They really come to life? I thought it was just a story…”

He’d fixed her with a strange look in his dark blue eyes, and had spoken in the serious tone that he only used for Very Important Rules (like ‘no running by the swimming pool in case she slipped’).

You must keep this a secret, Little Leaf,” he’d said earnestly. “A lot of storybook things are real. But there are people out there who would want to do great harm to the creatures that seek sanctuary here if they knew they were here, alright?”

She’d nodded, wide eyed and only half understanding. 

“Just wait til the sun sinks beyond the elms in a few minutes, and we can meet your new friend. I hope. It takes a lot of magic for a gargoyle to come to life though, and this one is still very young. He must be about your age.”

“Hey! I’m almost six and three quarters!” she’d pouted. 

James had sighed. “Yes, child. Exactly.”

She hadn’t understood his response, but she’d been too distracted anyway when a crackling sound like the crunching of eggshells rose above the whispering wind in the trees beyond the gravel that surrounded the house, and they both turned to look at the statue. 

His little wings flexed first, then he tilted his head, blinked his eyes, and in that moment, his hard, glittering, quartz skin rippled into something like bleached leather, though it kept its sparkle in the soft light escaping from the bedroom behind them. 

With massive, uncertain eyes like cut diamonds, he’d looked up at James, blinked, and then bowed. “Master James,” he’d murmured. 

“Hello, little one,” James had smiled, kneeling stiffly to greet the creature. The brace around his knee had creaked, but he ignored his obvious discomfort for the time being. “Aren’t you a rare thing? Where are your parents? Did you climb all the way up here on your own last night?”

Answering wing beats sounded in the evening air, and the little girl had screamed and jerked backwards into the doorway when a huge shape had soared out from behind the dark, tiled roofline above them. 

The creature banked sideways, and she’d grabbed a hold of James’ arm where he still knelt, and blurted, “Is that a dragon?”

Laughing, James stood again with a grunt of pain and shook his head, and she’d been shocked to see tears running freely down his face. “No,” he’d said, cuffing at his nose with the back of his wrist. “No, that’s a gargoyle, and my dear, dear friend.”

The figure had made a loop of the house, and then swooped back in to land by gripping hold of the outside of the balcony railing in taloned hands before folding their wings behind and hanging off like a rock climber halfway up a cliff face. They looked like a winged panther, but they had small, muscular breasts on their more humanoid upper torso, and a leonine head very like the little white gargoyle that was looking up at her. 

“Mama,” he grinned, showing his little, stocky canine teeth in his upper and lower jaws. 

“Quartz,” she growled at him. “You weren’t supposed to show yourself to the girl yet.”

He cringed. “Sorry mama. I just wanted to meet her. I thought she needed someone to play with.” His animal ears, rounded and set on the side of his head below the stubs of his horns, pulled back and he dropped his head, curling his absurdly long tail around his legs where he sat like a naughty puppy on the threshold. 

Six-and-three-quarter-year-old Leaf had taken one look at him and flung her arms around his shoulders, only narrowly avoiding bashing his stubby wings, and she’d hugged him until he’d wheezed. “You’re going to be the best playmate ever! We’re already best friends!” she’d declared. 

Unseen over her head, James and the gargoyle’s mother had exchanged a wry look, fighting off matching smiles, and had left their children to it. 

“Come, Feldspar, I would speak with you if I may,” James had said quietly, walking to the end of the long balcony. His cane tapped on the stone in time with his syncopated walk. “There is much to discuss. Starting with why you’ve woken up again now, and how you’ve kept your son from me for so long!”

“Our magic surged briefly almost seven years ago. You weren’t here, so we couldn’t reach you, but —”

“I was in France then,” he sighed. “I spent nearly a year stopping that necromantic ritual in the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise,” he said, his French accent perfect despite the soft lilt of Scottish that lingered in his tongue from his childhood. 

“All of us awoke for a time,” Feldspar told him. “There were four children born that summer. My little Quartz is one of them.”

James stopped in his tracks and stared at her as she stalked along the balustrade like a cat. “Four?” 

“Four,” Feldspar confirmed. 

“But… Usually there’s only enough magic in a colony for one child to be created at a time…”

“Indeed. In time, we all began to go dormant again, except for the children who stirred intermittently. The adults only awoke again a few nights ago. It has taken us since then to gather our strength, and I don’t know how long we will have before we go dormant again.”

“What’s caused the surge in magic this time?”

Feldspar’s eyes flickered to the young girl, who was desperately trying to scrub at the stain again on her son’s shoulder with a damp handkerchief, monogrammed in the corner with James’ initials. 

“It’s ok,” Quartz grinned at her. “I don’t mind.”

“But I stained you,” she said, tears brimming in her big, green eyes. “You were all glittery and magic and now you’ve got a blob on you…”

He laughed and looked down at it as best he could from that angle. It was on the top of his left shoulder joint so he turned in a full circle, straining to see it before stopping again. “I like it,” he said. “It looks like a leaf.”

She looked over at her uncle, unnerved to find him and the adult gargoyle already looking at her. “That’s what Uncle James calls me,” she said softly. 

“Then it’s perfect! Come on, you were going to show me what ‘crayons’ are.”

“Don’t you let her draw on you,” James called, but Feldspar laughed. 

“It’ll only stain if it happens when he’s in his stone form, and only then if it doesn’t come off before he shifts.”

So Quartz let his new friend drag him inside to show him the delights of her colouring book, while the adults spoke outside. When she looked back through the murky glass window though, she thought she saw him bring his hands to her face and press a kiss to her muzzle. 

“What’s your name?” Quartz asked her, distracting her. “You know mine, but I don’t know yours.”

She pulled a face. “My actual name is Leonora, but I hate it, so Uncle James calls me ‘Leaf’.”

“Can I call you Leaf too then?” he asked, and she nodded. 

“If you ever call me Leonora I’ll smash your tail off,” she growled, but he just laughed, reading the mischievous humour in her eyes and sensing that she wouldn’t really do something like that to him. 

“Leaf, then,” he smiled. “Just like my new mark.”

Every dawn, Quartz climbed back onto the balcony railing and took up a new and silly pose for the day, just to make her laugh when she woke up and saw him. 

That had been the summer she’d learned properly about the supernatural, and in between her ordinary lessons in reading and science and history with Uncle James, she’d spent the rest of her time learning about the history of magic and supernatural creatures like Quartz and his mother. 

After about a year, she met the rest of the colony too, though she wasn’t sure why she’d been kept from them for so long. Quartz said it was because they didn't know her, which she said was silly because once they met her, they’d know her anyway… 

Feldspar, with her mane of white crystals and enormous, grey, bat wings had swooped down one autumnal evening and frightened the life out of both of them where they’d been playing Snakes and Ladders on the balcony. 

“It is cold for the child to be out here,” she’d growled at Quartz, who had looked back at Leaf in surprise, as if he’d never considered that she’d feel things like the cold. “Fetch a coat, Leaf,” Feldspar had barked at her. “You’re coming with me tonight.”

“What?” they’d both replied at the same time. 

Now seven and a half, she had grown taller, but Quartz had also shot up with her in height. His tail was still far too long for him and she was always treading on it by accident and making him yelp, but his wings were growing a bit now too. He still couldn’t fly — they were far too small and stubby for that — but the little hook-like talons on the tips of their bat-like fingers were sharpening, and his horns were growing a little longer too. He was often rubbing them and said they itched. 

Her first ride on a gargoyle had been amazing. 

Quartz had raced across the rooftop below them, scrabbling and leaping across the different levels and turrets of the enormous mansion to keep up with them as Feldspar had flown a graceful circuit around the house with Leaf sitting on her back, just behind her wing-joints, holding on to two conveniently situated crystals in her mane, before going up to her uncle’s study tower in the north east corner of the building. 

There, three small shapes sat hunched against the autumn wind, watching them with the amber eyes of living gargoyles. 

When Feldspar landed gracefully on the balcony, Leaf slid inelegantly down, breathing hard and beaming. 

It took another few minutes for Quartz to join them, but by then, she’d been introduced to the other young gargoyles: his cousin, Celsian, who had a pretty, red fleck to his otherwise mottled white and olive green skin and a lump of jagged white crystal for each horn; Basalt, who had a rough, black stone body, and horns that had a hexagonal profile to them, even though they were only stumps like the others’; and Granite, with an appropriately massive and blocky body that was already marked with little rings of lichen down his back and a short tail as thick as a cudgel. 

They regarded her with excitement, even as they sat like well-trained pitbulls in a line, the hunched, watchful set of their shoulders already distinctive, even at such a young age. To her surprise, she saw that Celsian had no wings at all — not even stubs like Quartz had had until he’d started growing into them. Basalt and Granite did have wings though, and while Celsian had a fluid, leonine look to him like his cousin, Granite looked closer to a bear, and Basalt resembled a dragon to Leaf’s young, imaginative eyes. 

“Hi,” she breathed, and then, unable to help herself, she bounced on the spot and broke out into a broad, excited grin and giggled. 

Basalt broke parade rest first, stepping forward on all fours and barging a blocky forehead into her stomach by way of a greeting that was very catlike despite her dragon-esque appearance. When Basalt spoke, it was with a higher voice than Leaf had expected, and she realised the gargoyle was a young female like her. “It’s an honour to meet you at last,” she said formally. “Quartz has kept you all to himself for too long.”

Granite grinned and elbowed Basalt out of the way before extending his hand to her. She saw that it was more paw-like than Quartz’, which had four fingers and a thumb like a human’s while Granite’s fingers were shorter and more fused together like an animal’s paw. All four of them had claws though. She shook his hand and then looked to Celsian, who arched his back a little in discomfort and regarded her with a tilted head from where he was still sitting. He was graceful and beautiful like the fine china in the cabinets downstairs, but she could see the resemblance to Quartz in the leonine muzzle. 

“Hello,” he purred without going closer. 

Quartz chose that moment to clamber over the railing and topple, panting, into their midst. He looked up at her from where he’d flopped onto his back, laughed, and then he looked at his friends. 

“Clumsy oaf,” Basalt laughed as she swatted the side of his head and the blow connected with his stubby horn. 

He rolled over and sprang to his feet, though not before Granite planted a paw on his tail mid-roll and stopped him in his tracks like a little boat with its anchor snagged on a rock. He fell back onto his ass with a thud and a yelp, wings stretching instinctively so that he nearly smacked Leaf in the face with one, and Feldspar growled at them to stop mucking about. 

Quartz’ cheeks flushed pale pink when he met Leaf’s gaze and he got up again – carefully this time – and coiled his tail safely around his right ankle a few times, shooting Granite a sour look. Granite poked his tongue out, but caused no more problems. 

“Child,” Feldspar said to her, “These four have been born to the colony here, and your uncle and I think they are tied to you somehow as the next guardian of Wych Grove Manor. You have formed a bond with my son the way I formed a bond with your uncle, but the rest of the adults in the colony are also bound to protect him and this property, the way the next generation will be bound to you. I suggest you spend time getting to know each other.” 

And with that, she’d taken off and left the four gargoyles and a single human alone on the balcony of her uncle’s research tower. 

Following that night, young Leaf grew into the unhealthy habit of going to bed long after midnight and rising some time close to noon, just so she could spend as much time as possible with her new friends. 

Her uncle tried to get her to go into town and have a normal childhood over the summer holidays, enlisting her in activities at the local library and outdoor adventure camps to make connections with human children her own age, and while she did enjoy them, she always ached to come home to her truest friends and tell them all about the world beyond the enchanted borders of the mansion that she wasn’t allowed to talk about with anyone but them. 

By the time she was thirteen, the five of them were nearly inseparable. She and Quartz were closest, having bonded first and fastest, but Basalt proved as loyal and good a girl friend as she could ever have hoped for, defending her when the boys got a bit rough or when they got carried away and their teasing turned sour. Never Quartz’ though. His teasing never turned mean. 

Celsian had the sharpest tongue of all of them, and it was clear that he resented having no wings. As the others grew in strength and began practising short glides across the jumble of rooftops, Leaf and Celsian would sit on the balcony and watch, but in time, Celsian would slink away, his long tail dragging on the tiles, and they’d find him already returned to stone long before the dawn came. Apparently at night, the shift was voluntary, while the shift to stone with the dawn wasn’t. 

Quartz was the only one who roosted every night on her balcony, though once she and Basalt were playing dress up all night and forgot the time, so she’d spent the day as a surprised looking statue in a frothy pink tutu, which the others had found hilarious when they woke with the setting sun. Basalt had worn it all night anyway just to spite them. 

When James told Leaf that she would have to go away to boarding school though, she flat out refused to leave her room for a week.

She’d thrown such a tantrum that she’d accidentally chipped the tip off Quartz’ gradually-elongating horn when he’d tried to convince her that it might be good for her to go out and see the world, and that she could tell them all about it when she got back, just like she had with the summer camps. She’d thrown a paperweight across the room at him in an uncharacteristic fit of pique, and it had chipped his horn when he hadn’t ducked in time. She’d been absolutely mortified. 

She’d gone away to school in the end though, and she cried every night for a month in the draughty little dormitory room, cradling that chipped horn-tip of quartz in her hands. It always seemed to be warm — especially so at night — and when she’d returned for her first Christmas holiday, Quartz had told her he’d been able to sense how unhappy she’d been to start with. He’d placed his taloned hand over his heart and said, “I could feel it. Here.”

She’d hugged him and told him all about how miserable the whole place was, but even she had had to admit that she did enjoy most of her subjects. As smart as Uncle James was, there was an awful lot more for her to learn. 

Quartz too had been studying with his mother. They learned not only combat and aerial techniques to defend their home and their masters should the need arise, but astronomy, magic, history, and the study of other magical creatures and entities. She’d known they studied in the small hours of the morning, long after she’d drifted off to sleep — usually in Quartz’ lap because she hadn’t been able to keep her eyes open any longer — but what he told her seemed far more advanced than she’d realised. 

The worst though was when she went overseas for university. 

By the age of eighteen, she and Quartz had grown up together in near lockstep — she into the promise of a beautiful young woman, with her thick, auburn hair and wild array of freckles, her bright green eyes and her full figure, and Quartz into a lanky, angular gargoyle with wings that were now a bit too big for his narrow frame and a tail that was still too long for him. 

That sweet, rust-red stain on his shoulder that was the only bit of colour on him. Even in his shifted form, his leonine eyes were like grey diamonds, and every hair in the mane that spilled down between his horns to the nape of his neck was a pure, unpigmented white. His wings were stretches of white leather, and every talon was like ivory. His horns were a pure and perfect quartz, save for the chip that had remained in his left one, and as they grew longer, they had curved slowly, following the line of his skull until they flicked upwards at the tips. Some parts of them were clear like glass, while other areas had milky veins through them. Even his gossamer whiskers were white. 

Basalt and Granite both grew to monumental proportions though, bulking up each summer until they were even bigger than their parents. Basalt remained lean and lithe like a panther though, while Granite packed on muscle and a certain soft padding to go with it until he was the size of an actual bear, if not bigger. His thick, muscular wings looked like they could have lifted up a cargo ship with no real effort, and he used them in combat like bludgeons as much as he did to help him fly. 

Celsian remained the quiet and withdrawn member of the group, dedicating himself more to the study of lore and magic than any of the others, though Quartz was often to be found hunched over a table in her uncle’s library with his cousin, unpicking the intricacies of a ritual array. 

The night before she left for university, she cried harder than she’d ever cried in her entire life — harder even than when she’d first gone away to school — and they took their turns in comforting her. Granite dragged her into his colossal embrace and scrubbed his knuckles over the top of her head. “Come on, don’t cry! You’re supposed to be some badass Lara Croft,” he rumbled. 

“I knew I never should have introduced you to those films,” she wheezed. “Gods, get off me you great mountain of muscle…”

Celsian had peeled her out of Granite’s arms and surprised her by drawing her close to his mottled chest and purring softly. “We’ll miss you, Leaf,” he murmured, nuzzling the top of her head to soothe where Granite’s knuckles had ground against it. 

“Cel?”

“Mn?”

“Are you feeling alright?”

He’d snorted at her and rolled his eyes, releasing her and shoving her playfully into Basalt’s waiting arms before slinking away. He’d paused as he climbed up the wisteria that had snaked its way up her side of the house for centuries and looked down at her. “Take care, Leaf,” was all he said before disappearing with a flick of his crystal-studded tail. 

She’d hugged Basalt and promised to write to them all, and Basalt and Granite had left in a beating of wings as they set off together to patrol the borders, leaving Quartz standing by the rail and regarding her with his crystalline eyes. He tried to smile, but it dissolved quickly into tears that rolled down his lovely, velvet muzzle and she went to him, curling into his lap as he sank down onto the floor of the balcony and wrapped his huge wings around them like a tent.

They didn’t speak, but she lay there in his arms for hours before she finally looked up at him and kissed him on the soft fuzz of his upper lip. His whiskers twitched and he began to purr before he looked away, embarrassed by the noise. 

She laughed and kissed him again, but this time he groaned and she felt him shift his hips a little beneath her. 

She wasn’t naive. She’d known what the heat stoking between her thighs meant, the tingling and the ache in her core. She’d watched enough movies to know that attraction was something she should have been feeling towards humans her own age, but she’d never felt even so much as a spark for anyone. Anyone except Quartz… 

He was breathing in short, shallow, measured pants and his pupils had gone huge as he looked down at her, and in that moment, the two of them realised the truth at the same time. 

“Quartz,” she exhaled. 

“Mmm?”

She tipped her head back to rest on his shoulder — the one with the russet red leaf stain on — and looked up at him. “Touch me?”

He did. It wasn’t skilled but it was careful, and he listened, adjusting as he nudged her clit with his knuckle. He couldn’t use his fingertips as they were taloned and wickedly sharp, but he still made her come in his arms, and when she’d recovered, she returned the favour for him with a fumbling but sincere hand job that had him coming in only a few minutes. 

He’d carried her to bed afterwards and curled up around her, and when she’d woken in the morning, she’d had to leave him there in his stone form. She’d had a job extricating herself from him, and she half suspected he’d stayed there just to keep her trapped, until she realised he’d left just enough room for her to wriggle out. 

She left him a note under his stone hand, kissed him on the muzzle, and went downstairs to join her uncle for breakfast.

James had driven her to the airport, and before he’d waved her off at the gate with her massive suitcase, he’d handed her a small jewellery box. 

Frowning, she’d opened it, and found the tip of Quartz’ horn nestled on the black velvet cushion inside, but the thick end of it had been set in a silver bezel to make a tapering pendant, and it hung off a long, silver chain. “Keep him with you,” he said. “Close to your heart.”

“Uncle James?” 

“Yes?”

“I’ve never asked, but are you and Feldspar more than just… friends?”

The corner of his lip twitched, framed these days by a short, salt-and-pepper beard, and his dark blue eyes twinkled. “I think you already know the answer to that for yourself.”

She blushed, and hugged him. 

“Be careful, Little Leaf,” he said. “And keep your eyes open.”

In that first year of university, Leaf excelled in her studies, joined a lacrosse team, learned a bit more about her sexuality, dodged the advances of an incubus and the attentions of a literal demon, quietly exorcised a vengeful ghost from a corner of the university library with nothing but table salt, a rosary, and a thirteenth century copy of a rite of exorcism from Malta, and wrote weekly to Quartz at her uncle’s house. 

She received letters back, though only once a month, since there wasn’t nearly as much for him to report. 

His handwriting was so beautiful that her roommate remarked on it and asked if her ‘boyfriend’ was British royalty or something. She laughed and said that he was just old fashioned. 

Instead of returning home that summer though, she got an internship at a prestigious museum, and went straight from that into her second year. The pattern repeated itself so that she didn’t return to England for the entire three years of her degree, nor for the following year of her masters, nor the next two years of her PhD. 

She’d been away from Wych Grove Hall for a total of six years, and had established herself as quite the active member of the secret occult societies across the pond, but that little chip of quartz which always hung around her neck finally called her home out of the blue one autumn. 

Leaf had sat down on a wooden bench overlooking the wide, snaking river, with rowing teams sculling along after a day spent bent over their books, and had felt the pendant flare suddenly and briefly hot against her skin. With a soft gasp, she snatched it out from under her hoodie and curled her fingers around it. It really was warm. 

“Quartz?” she murmured, wondering if there was magic coursing through it. 

She wasn’t a witch — couldn’t wield magic herself beyond what she could borrow from objects and artefacts — but that didn’t mean she was immune to it either. She didn't hear his voice or anything, so she took out her phone and sent a message to her uncle. Unfortunately, technology had a way of fritzing and breaking around magical creatures, or she would have insisted that her uncle give Quartz a phone so she could contact him directly. 

<<Is everything ok?>>

Five minutes later, her phone buzzed and she looked down to see her uncle’s name on the screen. She tapped the message, and read his reply with wide eyes. 

>>How did you know? There’s been an attack on the house — someone used a powerful revenant to try and break through the defences. We stopped it.<<

<<Is everyone ok???>> She didn't want to single out Quartz over the others, but her heart was in her throat. 

>>Feldspar took a gash to the wing but she’s alright, and Quartz took a bit of a battering but he’s healing just fine. Everyone else is unharmed.<<

She went slack with relief for a moment, turning her eyes to the grey clouds gathering overhead. It promised to be a snowy autumn, and something chilly scraped down her spine like a warning. <<I’m coming home.>>

James didn’t reply immediately, but when she had returned to her little studio apartment, she found his message waiting for her. <<Tell me when and I’ll meet you at the airport. Do you have enough to cover the tickets?>>

She smiled. <<Despite my life as a lowly research fellow, I don’t need my millionaire uncle to buy me tickets, thank you. I’ll see what’s available next week and let you know.>>

>>I didn’t know museums paid well enough for business class…<<

<<They don’t!!>>

>>Then let me bump you up at least…<<

She rolled her eyes. <<You’ll do it anyway, won’t you?>>

>>Probably.<<

<<Fine. Thank you.>>

>>xx<<

<<Wait>>

>>Yes?<<

<<Don't tell the Four I’m coming home… I want it to be a surprise.>>

>>I’ll book you a flight that lands during daylight hours then.<<

>>You’re the best.<<

Waiting for her at the Arrivals hall of Newcastle International after a short internal hop from Heathrow was the same, slightly dishevelled, scholarly man in his late fifties; tall, with his short, grey hair now flecked with white at the temples and a few more fine lines around his eyes than when she’d last seen him in person, with his black walking cane in one hand. 

She flung herself at him and he nearly dropped the cane as he grunted and bore the impact, but he hugged her tightly with his other arm, the familiar tweed jacket with the worn elbow patches smelling faintly of libraries and a little of magic. 

“Missed you, Uncle James,” she half-choked in his ear. 

“You too, Little Leaf. It’s been very quiet without you at the Manor. Very still. The revenant attack not-withstanding, of course.”

“You mean the Four didn't cause chaos for you in my absence? I’ll have to talk to them about that.”

He smiled, releasing her and stepping back. He took her suitcase handle and began to wheel it towards the exit as he spoke. “You’re going to have a bit of a surprise when you see them again.”

Her heart stopped for a second. “Oh? I thought you said they weren’t permanently injured after the revenant?” 

James only laughed though, and she relaxed a bit. 

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll see,” was all he said. 

“Fine. Tell me more about this attack though. Have there been others?”

“Not here,” he muttered, glancing around, as if the nebulous Forces of Darkness were lurking in the Arrivals hall at Newcastle International Airport. “I’ll tell you everything when we’re in the car.”

It wasn’t a hugely long journey from Newcastle to the Scottish borders where Wych Grove Manor lurked on the southern side, but it was more than enough time for him to fill her in on the goings on. The people responsible for her father’s death had resurfaced, discovering after all this time that he’d mailed the artifact he’d been seeking abroad to a friend, who had only recently managed to bring it to Wych Grove herself for protection. 

The artefact had turned out to be some kind of focusing crystal for a massive ritual to raise a powerfully malignant entity from the dead, so it had been securely locked in the magical vaults beneath the Manor, and guarded by more than just a colony of gargoyles. 

“It’s safe for now,” he said. “Safe enough that you can relax with your friends when you get back.”

The traffic jam that clogged up the northbound A1 meant that the sun was starting to sink towards the horizon while they were still further away from the familiar row of elm trees than she’d have liked, but they were back before the daylight was gone. 

She raced out of the car and up to her old attic room, barely stopping to take in the few changes to the house of her childhood. 

There, crouched on the corner of her balcony and looking out at the grounds, was Quartz, but James was right. 

He was different. 

His wings were couched behind him in an easy, resting pose, and they no longer looked too big for his frame at all. He was taller than he’d been when she’d left at eighteen, and his muscles were more defined. He looked… fantastic. His tail was still a bit too long for him, but it trailed elegantly behind him to end in a little spiral on the balcony floor and it looked like it was balancing him instead of burdening him. There was a bit of a chip out of his ribs, which she assumed was a lingering scar from the fight with the revenant, but otherwise, his skin was the same, flawless, glittering white. Except for that leaf-shaped smear of red on his left shoulder. 

He had his clawed hands between his leonine back paws in a crouch that made him look like he was ready to spring into action, and his lip was drawn up in a little snarl that made him look fierce and short-tempered, not like the laid-back friend she’d grown up with. 

Too excited just to stand there and wait for the sun to go down, she darted back inside and took a quick shower to wash off the grime of travel that clung to her skin like a gritty miasma. Just as she stepped back out onto the balcony, dressed in jeans and a loose t-shirt, the light changed from the silvery grey of a late autumn evening to the pooling dusk of chilly twilight, and that fine, fracturing eggshell sound set her heart skipping. 

Unaware of her presence on the balcony right behind him, Quartz shook himself out and stretched his wings wide. He had been about to launch himself off the balcony into a dive when she brushed her fingertips over the pendant that she never ever took off.

He sucked in a breath of surprise and shuddered bodily with a short curse, tail going stiff, mane rising a little like the hackles on a dog. Then he turned around to check over his shoulder and found her standing there. 

His eyes — crystalline and colourless — went wide and his leonine jaw parted softly to show huge, thick canines. “Leaf?” he exhaled, then he sprang lithely down from the balcony railing and stood — towered — over her on two legs. 

“Holy shit,” she breathed back at him, staring up into his face. “Holy shit, Quartz,” she said again, and then began to laugh. “Look at you!”

His lips tugged up on one side as he huffed out a self-conscious laugh, and then let his diamond eyes rake up her body. “Back at you,” he grunted, sounding winded. 

Then he was sweeping her into his arms and nuzzling at her like a cat, and purring so loud she felt the vibrations in her own chest. 

The top of her head barely came up to his sternum these days, and his body had lost all that gangly, spindly quality he’d acquired during their teenage years. 

He leaned down, and her heart skipped a beat. She was certain that they’d been about to share a kiss when the whoosh of beating wings made them pull apart, and Basalt landed heavily on the balcony, grinning. “Felt something was different with Quartz. That explains it.”

“You felt something?” she asked before stepping over to greet her. “What do you mean?”

“We’ve all kind of formed a ‘colony bond’ of our own,” she explained, gathering Leaf into her arms and squeezing her til she let out a grunt and Quartz pulled her back with a protective growl. Leaf hadn’t realised how much she’d missed the sound of it til then.

Laughing, Basalt rolled her lovely, golden eyes and said, “Don’t get territorial now, Quartzie-pie. I’m a mated woman and you know it.”

“Mated?”

Quartz flushed a little, his cheeks going pink. “She and Granite are a mated pair.”

“Oh, congrats,” Leaf said. “When did that happen?”

“Couple of years ago,” Basalt shrugged. “Quartzie didn’t tell you?”

“No, he didn't,” she said archly, turning to face him and raising one eyebrow. 

He looked away, tail coiling around his ankle. “I didn’t want to bore you with gargoyle stuff.”

“And where is Granite?” she asked. 

“He’ll be here in five, four, three —” they heard huge, slow wingbeats, followed by a thud, a grunt, and the rustle of disturbed leaf litter as something truly massive landed carefully on the roof above the balcony. A second later, his familiar head popped over the edge, only now he was decorated all over like tattoos with rings of green and orange lichen, and he had somehow grown even bigger. 

“Holy shit, look at the size of you!” she exclaimed. “Listen, we should go somewhere where we can all actually see each other properly. Where’s Celsian?”

“Library,” Granite and Basalt said together. 

“Well, the library backs onto that big terrace. Why don’t we all meet there in a few minutes?”

“Quartzie could fly you there now,” Basalt cackled as she pushed backwards off the balcony and soared away into the night, followed by Granite’s truly enormous form.  

Leaf looked up at Quartz and fixed him with a look. “ ‘Quartzie’?” she echoed and he actually growled at her. 

“Don’t you start,” he grumbled. 

“How and where did that come from?” 

He leaned his hips against the railing and folded his gorgeous arms across his torso, looking at the floor between his taloned hind paws. His tail lashed a few times before he anchored it sullenly around his ankle again. His wings were draped back over the balcony, dangling like the sails of a ship in a strong wind, and she thought he’d never looked more beautiful. Or more awkward. 

“Your uncle had a visitor about, what, three years ago? Some witch from Italy, and she brought her daughter with her. The kid was like… three or four? Anyway, they stayed here for a few weeks to pick James’ brain about some rite or other, and the kid kept calling me Quartzie, and the others thought it was fucking… hilarious, so… it kind of stuck.”

She smiled. “Well, so long as you keep your promise never to call me Leonora, I promise never to call you Quartzie. Even if it is actually fucking adorable.”

He growled properly, the sound low and ripe and deep in his chest, and she laughed even as something stirred further down her body at the sound of it. She stepped close to him and put her hands flat on his chest, just above where he’d crossed his arms. At her touch, he let his arms fall away to his sides and sighed out a shaky exhale. The growling turned to a steady, rich purr. 

“You can call me whatever you like, Leaf,” he breathed. “Fuck. I’ve missed you so much.”

“You’ve been right here,” she said, drawing out the pendant for him to look at more closely.  

Those diamond eyes filled with tears and he smiled at her before pulling her close to his chest again. “I missed you so fucking much,” he said again. “It’s like more than that piece of me was missing,” he added, referring to the horn tip. “It’s like I can only breathe again now that you’re here. How… How long are you staying?”

“I didn’t book a flight back yet, but if I move back to the Manor, I’ll probably have to go back just to wrap things up over there. I booked four weeks off work at the museum though.”

He nodded. “Ok.”

“Come on,” she said before either of them got too morose. “Let’s go find Celsian and the others?”

Where Quartz’ mother had been more quadrupedal, Quartz was definitely more comfortable on his hind legs, so when he offered to fly her, he said, “You’ll have to sit in my arms and… I’ve not flown anyone before.”

“You want to do a test run before you hurl us both off the parapet?” she asked, more than a little nervous. 

“Ok,” he said and suddenly she was in his arms. 

She squawked as she realised what he’d done — scooped her up like she weighed no more than a child’s teddy bear — and then barked out a laugh. 

“I don't think I’m going to have any trouble,” he grinned, but he still beat his wings a few times to get the feel of flying with someone in his arms. Then he jumped up, using his wings to help, onto the balcony railing balanced there like a circus performer on a high wire, and then he simply tipped forwards. 

Leaf was not ashamed to admit that she screamed and clung to him, but when he laughed and told her to open her eyes, she did, and she found the ground sweeping past beneath her in a dizzying rush. 

She was laughing by the time he landed on the wide, largely empty terrace of the library after a lap of the Manor. 

There was an old set of wooden, garden table and chairs in one corner where her uncle liked to take his coffee on summer mornings, but other than a few wilted plants in huge urns in each corner of the rectangular terrace, there was nothing else. 

Nothing except for three gargoyles. 

“Holy shit,” she said to Quartz as he landed easily a few yards away from them and set her down carefully. “How fucking massive is Granite now?”

He was at least eight feet tall, and as wide and solid as a bulldozer. He grinned at her, baring enormous canines that looked like they could puncture a steel vault door, and he stretched his colossal wings out to either side. But it wasn’t Granite who held her attention for long. Leaning against the doorway into the library like a ghost was a slender, elegant figure who had all the sinuous lines of Quartz’ body, but with a more delicate architecture underneath. Where Quartz had put on some muscle, Celsian had remained slim. 

Like the others, he had a little skirt around him for modesty, though it hung sinfully low on his hips and he reminded her of wistful, Roman sculptures of young men. He had the leonine legs of his cousin too, with paws and a tail, but his humanoid torso was bare in the darkening twilight, and he looked almost coy as he regarded her with his level, amber eyes. His hair was long and straight where Quartz’ was thick and wavy, and it fell down his back to his waist in a shimmering veil of jade green and white strands. His face was more humanoid than Quartz’ too, though he still had that feline nose and mouth. 

He had his slender arms crossed over his bare chest, one ankle hooked nonchalantly around the other. The fact that he had no wings was now more obvious than it had ever been beside the other three as their wings rose well above their heads and their taloned tips dragged on the floor. 

She left the others and crossed to him and he unfurled like a lily for her, opening his arms and drawing her into a hug. “Hello, Leaf,” he purred softly in her ear in a smooth baritone. “We missed you.”

“I missed you too,” she said, squeezing him firmly around his narrow waist until he laughed and a rusty little purr started up in his throat. “So much.” 

She stepped back and looked at the other three who were all regarding the pair of them with wry smiles on their faces, and she said, “Now. Fill me in on everything.”

Basalt and Granite adopted that stereotypical pose that all gargoyles found restful, crouching like cats with their hands splayed between their hind paws, their wings resting behind them, and their tails rather adorably intertwined in the scant space between their bodies. 

Celsian stalked across the terrace and drew over a chair, since he could actually sit in one without it interfering with his non-existent wings. He had offered Leaf one, but she looked at Quartz, now reclining with his back against the balcony railing, and he smirked at her and patted his thighs. 

Just like they’d done when they’d been growing up, she climbed into his lap and rested her back against his chest while he held her in place with both arms. Somehow it had only become more comfortable over time, and he even played with her hair as she listened to them telling her all about the ritual focus and the attack on the Manor grounds.

Eventually though, the mix of jet lag and the steady raking of his talons through her loose, auburn hair put her into a kind of stupor. 

She didn’t notice herself dropping off to sleep in his arms, and she only stirred when his feet touched down on her own balcony. Inhaling deeply, she looked up at him and blinked. “Quartz?”

“You fell asleep like always,” he laughed quietly, crossing her room to her bed and depositing her carefully onto it. 

She sat up and looked at him. “Stay?”

He huffed out a sigh and shook his head. “Every instinct in me is telling me to guard your door.”

“You can still guard my door from in here,” she said, eyeing the empty space in the bed beside her. It looked a lot smaller than the last time she’d slept in it, and it was clear he was thinking the same thing. “Please?”

Quartz let out another breath and then let his gaze drop to her chest as he said, “You slept every night with that on, didn’t you?”

Her fingertips found the quartz pendant and she drew it out from under her top, turning it over. 

He shivered. 

“I never took it off,” she admitted. “Not once.”

“It’s so intense now that you’re here with me again,” he whispered. His tail whipped once behind him before he latched it around his leg. His wings drew upwards a little, the tension evident in his body. “It’s like you’re touching me.”

“I am touching you,” she said. “Come here and let me touch the rest of you,” she added, and he seemed to move without realising he’d even lifted his paws from the ground. 

He curled around her and began to let his hands roam over her. “You’re so beautiful,” he exhaled, raking his dangerous teeth reverently across her collarbone even as she squirmed and shifted. 

“Wait, let me take this off,” she said, tugging at the hem of her top. 

When she’d undressed fully, save for the necklace, he just stared at her. 

“You too?” she asked.

He unlatched the simple buckle that kept the belt of his kilt in place and it fell away to either side of his hips. She remembered what he looked like underneath all too well from that one night when they’d shared their first, awkward fumblings at eighteen, and she’d thought of nothing else but the white velvet of his sheath, the soft give of it against her fingers, the way his cock had slipped free of it, and the weight of it in her hand. 

Now, with precome beading at the tip of it, he was already half-hard and half-exposed, and he rutted against her bare thigh as his wings twitched and spread out above her. 

“I want you,” she said, staring at him. Her mouth had gone dry and she regarded him with blown pupils. “Gods, Quartz, you’re so beautiful. Please…”

“I haven’t… There’s been no one… not since that night…” he grunted, the pace of his hips picking up as he smeared precome all over her skin. He was scent-marking her. 

She shifted and rolled a little to be more underneath him and parted her legs. 

“I want you,” she insisted, drawing him down with her hands on his ribs as he loomed over her in a low plank. His wings were now spread on either side of him, wide and tense and occasionally twitching. “Please, you’re so beautiful. You’re all I’ve ever wanted, Quartz. You’re all I’ll ever want…”

At that, his tip entered her and he eased slowly inside in a tremulous thrust that had them both moaning. 

He was bigger than she’d expected, but not too big to take comfortably. They were both so wet too that it made it only too easy for him to slide into her, and when he was seated, balls deep inside her, they both let out another, deep groan. 

She’d heard people mock the expression ‘making love’, but that was the only way she could think to describe the slow, deliberate way he rolled his hips, catching her so deep it stole her breath and made her see stars each time his tip caressed that place inside her, and the way he purred in great sonorous waves; the way he mouthed tenderly at her neck and rubbed his jaw into her hair. 

His torso was smooth and bare, the short hair that covered his leonine head only beginning again at his waistline and travelling up his spine in a narrow stripe, and as she sucked a kiss over his nipple when he took the opportunity to arch his back and go a little deeper, his hips spasmed and his tail suddenly lashed around her leg in a tight grasp. 

“Fuck, that’s so hot,” she laughed, thumbing across his other nipple as it tightened and he shuddered. 

He picked his pace up a little after that, but when they both came within a few heartbeats of one another, he was still moving slow and deep inside her. He filled her, giving himself utterly to her in a series of shuddering, moaning spasms before collapsing atop her. He only just caught himself on his forearms in time, though the rest of his spine seemed to have gone slack and heavy where he was pressed atop her. He stayed inside her for a long time, occasionally grinding his hips against her until he was completely soft and he withdrew and rolled over, mindful of his wings, to lie on his side. 

“Are you alright?” he asked. 

“Never better,” she sighed. 

And when morning came, he was still lying in her bed, a solid effigy of love, with the most blissful expression on his face. 

That evening, she came to bed early and lay back down beside him, waiting for him to return to flesh again. 

Except this time she began teasing him while he was still stone. She scratched along his ears gently with her nails, kissed his feline nose and muzzle, and, because she had access to it from the way he was lying on his side, she teased his stone sheath too so that by the time he fractured back to life again, he was desperate for her. 

“Fuck,” he gasped as the transformation ran its course and his hips bucked wildly. “Fuck, Leaf… You absolute tease…” He grabbed her and yanked her naked body close to him so that he could rut himself against her for a little relief, his cock unsheathing far quicker than it had done the previous night. Her skin was wet with his arousal in seconds. 

“How much can you feel when you’re stone?” she asked, breathless as he ground himself against her thigh before rolling her over onto her front and planting one hand between her shoulders to keep her in place. 

She felt suddenly exposed and vulnerable, but as he parted her legs with his knee and slid his cock between them, seeking out her wet entrance from behind, she found she didn’t mind too much at all. 

“Everything,” he growled in her ear. “I’m aware of everything.”

“Oh.”

He sheathed himself inside her in a single stroke and began fucking her like he’d been doing it his whole life, not like this was only his second time. 

He picked up her hips and yanked her onto all fours, rising onto his knees himself and thudding his hips against hers with each stroke. His wings beat in time too, helping him to thrust deeper. “You’ve been driving me insane for hours,” he growled at her. “Fuck. Fuck, I’ve never been so pent up in all my life. Is… Is this… Are you alright?” he added without slowing down. 

“Don’t you dare stop,” she gasped back, pushing her hips further into his hold so he could catch her just-so inside. 

“In that case, I’m not stopping til I’ve given you exactly what you asked for by teasing me like that,” he snarled. “Fuck… It won’t be long though. Thought I was gonna come the moment I shifted…”

“You know that I’m only going — oh fuck — only going to use this against you again?” Her entire body shunted and rocked with the force of each thrust, though his taloned hands at her hips kept her in place on his cock.

“Well now you know what I’ll be like when I wake up,” he shrugged, pausing briefly to circle his hips with his cock sheathed to the hilt inside her so that she all but screamed as everything inside her lit up. “So… as long as you know what you’re doing to me, and what I’m going to be like when I wake up, I don’t mind.”

That following day, he did roost on her balcony, concerned that he’d been neglecting his duties too much, but when the evening tipped towards night and she stepped out in just a floaty, silk robe with nothing on underneath except her necklace, she did the same to him again.

His cold, hunched, quartz body seemed to thrum like static beneath her fingertips as she traced them down his ribs and over his hips where he was crouched on the edge. She teased up his tail too, imagining how it would twitch when he shifted from stone. She teased circles over and over at the very root of it — he’d forgone the kilt this time, so she had perfect access to all of him. All of him. She teased his sheath again too, drawing more tiny circles with her fingers around it and over the tip, wondering if he was going insane again. 

Her necklace flared hot against her skin and she smiled. 

She cupped his balls too and lavished attention on them, then walked her fingers up the bumps of his vertebrae where he was hunched in that typical, gargoyle pose, and she caressed the point where his wings met his shoulders over and over. 

She mapped his body with her fingers while the sun sank ever lower, sending snow-fall sparkles across his skin. 

A crack skittered across the stone of his shoulders and down his spine, and she nearly jumped back in alarm. Glancing up, she saw that the last, copper sliver of the sun was still visible behind the winter-bare branches of the elm trees. Another crack joined the first and he groaned like a rockfall, heaving and pitching forwards as his wings flexed reluctantly, little flakes of stone fracturing off and away to dust like dry clay. 

“Quartz?” she uttered, alarmed. It wasn’t quite sunset yet. 

He snarled at her then turned his head stiffly. His eyes were still that opaque quartz that his whole body went when he turned to stone in sunlight, but they were clearing like melting ice the longer she stared at him. 

Juddering around as though he were fighting off the spell that bound him to stone through sheer willpower alone, he stepped slowly off the balcony’s rim and backed her up against the wall of the house. 

With stone dust still trailing from his wings behind him and his skin still cold as marble, he rutted his hips just once and came with a snarl all over her hand, which had found its way to his groin as he’d crowded in on her. 

“Fucking… tease…” he grunted even as he still came into her hand, his cock spurting freely. “Fuck… Fuck.” 

He shuddered violently, wings now drawing in close, his hands almost painfully tight on her shoulders. “Fuck.”

“Did I break you?” she asked, a little stunned. 

“Al-fucking-most,” he growled through clenched teeth.

“I like this side of you,” she chuckled, still with his huge cock pulsing in her hand. It was still spilling come all over her palm and fingers, his balls lifted high as he emptied himself all over her. “I suppose I deserved this though.”

“What side of me?” he asked, sounding thoroughly wrecked as he drew back just enough to meet her gaze. His eyes were back to their normal, diamond brilliance now. 

“This bossy, demanding side of you,” she said. “You were always so gentle growing up. I like this more dominant Quartz too.”

He laughed. “I’m only like this because you drive me completely insane,” he countered. “You make me so fucking needy. It’s like I forget everything except how it feels to be touching you.”

She squeezed his softening cock and he grunted, tipping his forehead forwards to rest it on the crown of her head and baring his teeth in a snarl.  

“I’ve created a monster,” he exhaled against her skin. “I should have told you I can’t feel a thing.”

“That would have been a lie, Quartz, and best friends don’t lie to each other.”

“No,” he sighed, nuzzling her fondly. “Come on then. Let me clean up and I’ll tease the absolute living fuck out of you with my tongue for hours instead. See how you like it.”

“I think I’m going to love it,” she quipped as she headed into her bedroom and made for the en-suite to rinse off her hand. 

“A monster,” he muttered from somewhere behind her as he closed the balcony doors against the night. “An absolute fucking monster.”

“You love it.”

“Yes I fucking do.”

_

As ever, I hope you enjoyed this month's offering! More Willow Creek Werewolves on the way soon, I hope, for those following Ben & Tanner's story, with Caleb's being worked on in the background as well.

Catch up on my masterlist of Patreon stories here.