Forbidden love, lonely hearts, demons, dwarves and Santa. Two sensual Christmas Fantasies to warm your heart this Holiday season.

Christmas Wizardry:
Daniel, High Wizard of the Earth, saves Merri from demons. Inside the Daniel’s Dark Tower they are safe from the demons, but will two lonely people find something more than a little Christmas cheer?
Wishing Rights:
Mallow, a dwarven widow, rescues Pascal, an elf from the North Pole, when he is injured in a rockslide. But elves do not marry dwarves. Someday he will have to return to his own land.

Pascal, though, is an elf, with a connection to Christmas, and an understanding of his Wishing Rights…

*~*~*~EXCERPTS!*~*~*~

CHRISTMAS WIZARDRY

Feeling quite jolly, Daniel headed to the parking lot, only to find a horrock demon chasing a young woman. She wore a most revealing green dress, very short, with her pretty legs covered with green stockings and ending in odd shoes with the pointed tips curved up, ending in dangling bells. The horrock demon got closer and she smacked it with what looked like a book bag.
Well, that was only going to anger the demon.
Daniel stepped up. “If I may be of assistance?” He conjured some melt powder and blew it on the horrock, reducing it to a pile of goo in a moment.
The girl looked at him, squealed, and tore off.
Daniel was smitten. She had hair the color of cinnamon, and eyes the color of milk chocolate. Her figure was trim but curvy and as she ran off he got a glimpse of a firm, round bottom when her short dress blew up in the December wind.
He wanted to taste her. How long since he’d had a lover…well, there was that swamp witch three years ago…clammy, though quite lovely…
While he was thinking, she moved several cars away.
“You’re not safe,” he called to her.
Her face went white and she squeaked. He moved toward her and her eyes got huge in her heart shaped face.
“Oh! You are safe from me. But the horrock demons. Hive mind.” He tapped his head. “Now they all know what you smell like and will be after you. Though why they would be chasing you is a mystery.”
“What?”
Her voice had a husky quality that sent a little thrill down Daniel’s spine.
“You should come with me to my tower. I can find the breech they are squeezing through and close it off. They rarely make it to earth.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you! You’re a guy in a bath robe!”
Daniel looked down at his robe, a basic black velvet he wore for normal work hours. “Hmm. I guess I should have changed into regular earth attire.”
The girl squeaked again. Three horrock demons surrounded her, swinging their long arms in agitation, their greasy hair bristling as they reached for her.

*****

WISHING RIGHTS

Pascal sighed as pulled his hood back on and turned his back to the biting wind. Mid-November was a bad time to hike into the rocky heights of the mountains to search for coughwort. But it was also a bad time for an outbreak of the cough. Santa was nearly worn thin trying to fill in for so many absent elves.
Now the apothecaries were out of coughwort, and he, being the youngest and strongest of the Guild, was the one elected to hike into the mountains to harvest more herbs.
Snow covered the heights and shadowed places but the meadows were dry. He found numerous plants and rejoiced that he would only need to spend one more night in the wilderness. The journey downhill to the North Pole could be accomplished in a day.
He went around a rocky protrusion and came upon a dry meadow full of coughwort.
He heard a gasp that made him jump a foot. It can’t be a bear, this time of year.
It was a dwarf woman, with a basket on her hip, digging coughwort with a tool similar to his.
They stared at each other, neither one moving or speaking. There was no contact between the elves at the North Pole and the dwarves who lived in the rock hills and forests to the south.
“I’m-I’m just harvesting coughwort. I mean you no harm,” he said.
The woman was small and very colorful. Her skin was a warm brown, and her hair flamed like a fire. Even from the space of the few feet between them, Pascal could see that her eyes were not the ice blue of elven folk, but bright grass green.
And her lips—they were nearly round, and coral pink. Nothing like the thin pale lips so prized in elven women. Her ears were pointed, like his own, but they were a little larger, and peeked out through her wild hair.
“Me, too.” Her voice sounded breathy, as if she was frightened. “Coughwort. The cough is in the villages downriver.”
He nodded. “I see. We have it also at the North Pole. I am almost done with my harvest, since my bag is nearly full.”
“Yes, my basket is almost full. I will return home now.” She backed away, eyes never leaving him.
There was an ominous grinding sound.
She gave a breathy scream and he followed her line of vision to see a rockslide coming right at him. He lurched out of the way, but not far enough to miss the hits. He went down in pain.