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bathed her face with an unholy gleam, made her silken curls shine like rubies, and Elijah’s mouth went dry.
    Had he seriously thought she was just pretty? That she was cute? She was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen, a goddess of fire.
    “Are you paying attention?” Again that slight frown furrowed the space between her eyebrows, and Elijah found that he wanted to reach out and smooth the skin with the tips of his fingers.
    He didn’t know how she would react to a simple touch like that, which wouldn’t normally stop him . . . but she had a furnace full of molten glass behind her.
    He wasn’t stupid. He’d wait until he wasn’t literally playing with fire.
    “I’m paying attention.” Though it might not have been wise, he moved a step closer to her than he suspected she was comfortable with. Her shoulders stiffened, but a sidelong glance also showed him that the brush of their arms made her nipples tighten.
    He made her uncomfortable, but she also wanted him. He was immensely pleased with the combination.
    Holding herself rigid, as if unwilling to give in to the urge to move away from him, Samantha held out the metal rod for Elijah to see.
    “This is a blowpipe. And I just dare you to make a joke about that.” She raised an eyebrow at him, and he gestured for her to continue. “This pear shape at the end is what I use to collect a gather of glass.”
    Elijah watched, fascinated, as Samantha placed the end of the blowpipe into the glowing orange interior of the furnace.
    “This is called the melting furnace.” She rolled the pipe competently, wrapping a thick substance around its end. “This is always kept hot, and it’s always full of colorless liquid glass.”
    “Where do you get the glass from?” Elijah remained transfixed as Samantha removed the blowpipe from the furnace.
    “I make my own. It’s mostly silica, with some potassium and limestone as stabilizers.” Samantha rolled the glob of molten glass against the edge of the oven, her fingers working with small, competent movements. “After twelve hours at twenty-two hundred degrees, it becomes liquid.”
    The red-hot glow of the glass was fading, the gather cooling, Elijah guessed, now that it was outside of the oven.
    “Pick a color.” Samantha looked at him, still twirling the pipe. Her eyes were bright, that snapping apple green, and in that moment it was the only color Elijah could see.
    “Green.” He watched as Samantha pulled a dish full of what looked like dark sand from a metal shelf.
    “What’s that?” He watched, fascinated, as Samantha rolled the glass in the powder.
    “This is colored glass, ground down as fine as salt.” Her biceps flexed with the effort of keeping her movements even as she moved to another, smaller furnace and opened the door.
    “This is called the glory hole. It’s a smaller furnace used to reheat. This will fuse the green into the colorless glass.” Samantha removed the blowpipe from the glory hole, and Elijah was surprised at the jolt of delight he felt when he saw that the gather of glass was now a deep green.
    Except . . .
    “Can we make it lighter?” He was intent now, engrossed in the project. Samantha pressed her lips together as she looked at him.
    “Micromanage much?” Her voice was tart. He grinned at her, pleased to see she couldn’t quite control the quirk of her own lips.
    Leaning closer so that his lips brushed against the lobe of her ear, he whispered, his voice husky, “You don’t know the half of it.”
    She didn’t jerk away, didn’t try to deny the heat that sparked between them as their eyes met and held.
    She kept her eyes on his face as she moved to a table, still turning the rod.
    “The glass is the consistency of honey now.” Her own voice had thickened with arousal, and Elijah inhaled deeply. A fine sheen of sweat covered her skin and made it glow as she finally looked away from him to her work, holding something that looked like a ladle against the