Steve was half-finished with the magic circle on the living room floor when Revel woke up. It was a cold winter and the fire had been burning most of the day, heating the house nicely, and Revel, lacking anything better to do, had been drifting in and out of slumber on the stone floor in front of the hearth. If the fire started going out, he’d wake up and breathe more heat into it; otherwise, he stayed put and passively absorbed the warmth. Steve paused to appreciate the sight—miles of tan skin and sleek black scales, muscles just a shade off from human rippling as his lover stretched, thick claws fitting smoothly into the grooves carved into the fireplace during a thousand sleepy wake-ups—and then squawked when a thick black tail swept over one of his chalk lines.
“Hey! Now I need to fix that.”
