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This excerpt is unedited and may differ from the final product. The copyright is held by Elizabeth G. Hanawa, 2007.

From the bakery’s kitchen came a slight, skinny woman who looked as though she might come up to Wyn’s shoulders, if she stood on tip-toes. Heavy black eyebrows matched the with thick black lining her dark eyes. They looked even darker in her pale, mushroom white skin. Her dark eyes held anger and sadness, empathized by a sullen frown.

She took off the hair net and ran her fingers through her short, blue-black hair until it spiked up from her skull. Removing the white, long-sleeved coat she wore showed tattoos up both arms and livid colored dragon tattooed from the top of one collarbone around her neck to the top of the other collarbone. Its eyes had been colored so it seemed to glare at anyone looking at her. She glanced around the room, clear jewels on her shirt and the silver pierced through her ears, one nostril, and an eyebrow glimmered in the bakery’s lighting.

Her eyes met Wyn’s.

His psyche leapt to hers in a powerful blue-white arc and met in the middle in a shower of multicolored sparks.

A sudden surge of lust knocked Wyn from his chair to collapse on the floor.

The heat from the stranger’s eyes just before he fell left Jig shaking and clinging to edge of the cookie display cabinet. The frosted snowmen, Santa elves, and reindeer smirked at her from beneath the glass case.