Spirit Bound - Christine Feehan [125]
Her heart pounded and she tasted fear in her mouth. She was baiting a tiger and this could go wrong very fast. Her world would come crumbling down if he chose all the wrong things, but she had no real choice. She wanted this man. She wanted to be that woman he lived for, the one he built his life around. She wanted to belong to him. Her element had chosen him, and then her body, long before she’d ever had a chance to think clearly. She was already freefalling, it was up to him whether or not he caught her.
Stefan studied the mirror systems, intrigued by the idea of constructing his own kaleidoscope. Until he’d looked into the one in Judith’s dark studio, he hadn’t really considered what a kaleidoscope could actually do. Most people thought of them as a child’s toy, and he had inadvertently fallen into that category. Even when she’d told him that kaleidoscopes could lower blood pressure and aid women in childbirth or help an autistic person, he still hadn’t realized what the colorful instrument could do. When he’d looked into Judith’s scope, there in her dark studio, he knew he was seeing into her soul.
He looked over the long table with charms, beads, wire and crystals everywhere and knew whatever choices he made would give Judith that same glimpse into him. Essentially, if he did this, he would be revealing his true self to her. There were thousands of options laid out before him. Those tiny bits of metal and crystal would give Judith every reason to run from him, but he refused to cheat. Either she could love him as he was, broken and twisted like the metal, or they wouldn’t stand a chance.
The seven-pointed system appealed to him. He glanced at her as he handed it to her.
Judith nodded. “You’re a complex man and I imagine choosing the seven-pointed system means far more to you than just the complexity of it.”
“I’m one of seven brothers. Although they separated us, our lives mirrored one another. Are there choices for the outside of the scope?”
“I have wraps for the outside, or you could powder-coat it.”
“I would prefer to powder-coat it,” he said immediately. He wasn’t a fancy man. In fact he wanted it plain and the powder-coating could look like gunpowder . . . “Or . . .” He spotted a scope already made at the end of her table. “What’s that?”
The scope sat on a tower made of what looked like stained glass. The scope itself was powder-coated, yet around the edge was that same stained glass look that appealed to him. The glass seemed to shimmer and change color when he looked at it.
“That’s called dichroic glass.”
“It’s fascinating. It changes color when you look at it from a different angle.”
“It’s made using various metals in micro-thin layers, vaporized using an electron beam in a vacuum chamber. I don’t make them myself, but I love the versatility. Some are clear backed and others have a black back.”
Judith sipped her tea while she watched him get lost in the artistry of making his own kaleidoscope. She loved teaching classes on making scopes, because no one could be surrounded by the bright colorful objects and not slip into a dream of creativity. Some clients hummed, others were silent, but all smiled while they worked. She always felt joy surrounding her when she taught a class.
Stefan Prakenskii was a serious man with a tragic past. She doubted he saw it that way. His life simply was what it was. He accepted that his parents had been murdered and his brothers ripped away from him. He accepted that he’d been shaped into a killer through rigid disciplined work and punishment, just as he accepted the strange magnetic pull between them.
He was a man who found moments of joy in beautiful things. He found her beautiful, like the art he so admired. The type of work he did—and she didn’t want to think too closely about what that was exactly—had hardened him into a watchful, lethal man.