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in a squire’s garden, amidst other statuary and sending my horse home without me. I had been wise enough to strip off my clothes before I changed completely but in my conceit I thought no one would notice an extra statue, even a great, huge hulking beast of a gargoyle that was blatantly out of place in the middle of graceful nudes.”
    “You’re pretty spectacular in your gargoyle form,” she murmured, blushing when he arched an eyebrow at that comment.
    “I’m pretty sure you’ve never seen me in all of my glory,” he countered. “I’ve always been very careful to shield your eyes.”
    She simply smiled, unwilling to tell him about the time she was seventeen and had snuck up onto the roof at noon. Ajreis had provided a temporary shadow spell to hide her presence and Armand had never known she was there. Her first glimpse of a male’s anatomy was eye-popping and she had almost given herself away by gasping out loud. Since then, she had discovered through art class that human males have much, much smaller penises. Thank God. “Go on, Armand, what happened?”
    He gave her a look but continued with the tale, “I thought I had gotten away with it until the beautiful Katrina came out into the gardens just as the sun was setting. I willed her away but I was still young and didn’t have that kind of influence yet. As the sun set she watched me change.”
    “I’m sure you were quite the sight for young, virginal eyes,” Ferris muttered, slashing a few lines onto the sketch pad, jealous that the beautiful Katrina got to see what she had hungered to see for so long: Armand’s transformation. She wanted to watch him change from a human to a gargoyle and back to a human.
    He chuckled, “Well, she didn’t scream and for a gargoyle that was something. Within a few days she gave me her virginity and back then that actually meant something so of course I offered her my nights.”
    There went that flare of jealousy again because virginity still meant something, at least it did to her. Despite being the freak in high school there were still plenty of opportunities to lose her virginity, had she decided that was what she wanted. Clearing her throat, she asked casually, “So, do you offer your nights to every girl who gives you her virginity?”
    He chuckled and shook his head no, “Not after Katrina.”
    “Do you make a habit out of taking girls’ virginity?”
    He laughed harder, “Not at all but occasionally the situation arises and I accept. It’s not that big of a deal.”
    Her heart was hammering in her chest, wanting to scream at him that it was a big deal, that a girl only lost her virginity once and she wanted to give hers to him. Even if it didn’t mean anything to him it meant everything to her. “What happened? I mean, why didn’t she accept your gift and become a gargoyle? Did she not want to lose her family?”
    “I don’t know,” he said, shrugging his broad shoulders, his muscles flexing and bunching in the golden ambient light. He stared off, lost in the past, and she quickly sketched the wistful, heartfelt look in his green eyes. When he spoke his voice seemed to come from another place, another time, “There was a moment that I felt our souls connect and I knew – I knew – that we were meant to be together. But in the next heartbeat she was telling me that she couldn’t go through with it, that it was for the best.
    “And then she disappeared and left me to face my last night alone,” he spat out, the resentment twisting his voice. He looked up and met her eyes, almost pleading with her to understand, “I was furious, Fer. She left me and I had to face my final night as a human alone since my brothers had gone out to give us time to ourselves.”
    Her heart was breaking for him and the sketches she was working on blurred with tears. There were no words to make it better, even time didn’t seem to ease the pain he had experienced.
    “They returned home just before the sun rose,” he