“Jesus.” Beck’s murmured curse was barely audible but she lifted her gaze back to those amazing eyes, framed with thick, dark lashes. Heat shimmered between them.
She closed her lips around her fingertip as she drew it out of her mouth. “Mmm. You’re right. Spicy.”
For a moment, the rest of the bar faded around them, but she was brought back to reality as Marco wrapped up the tasting lesson, handing out coupons for free appetizers on their next visit while the pretty waitress who’d served them chips brought out platters of nachos, mini chimichangas, and chicken wings.
Carrie was in a conversation with Will, beside her, that Hayden couldn’t hear, so she looked around the bar, feeling a little dazed. And not just from the tequila.
Some people had left, others stuck around to order more drinks. Beck approached again and set a glass in front of her.
She looked up at him, raising her eyebrows
“On the house,” he said in a low voice, leaning toward her and winking. “The Don Julio.”
The one she’d liked the best.
“Thank you.” She wasn’t sure why she was getting a free drink, but she picked it up and sipped.
“I don’t know your name.” Beck held out a hand.
“Hayden. Hayden Miles.” She set down the drink and slid her hand into his. He gripped her fingers firmly, and held on. A tingle started low in her belly at the warm clasp of his hand and the way he was looking at her.
“Good to meet you, Hayden. I mean, we already met, but now it’s official.”
That smile. Oh my God, that lazy, sinful smile. The tingles spread outward through her entire pelvis and up into her breasts.
“So glad you appreciate the complexity of a fine tequila,” Beck said.
Warmth expanded from her chest through her body and faded into a faint prickle, except between her thighs, where heat still pulsed. Feeling a little buzzed from the tequila and from Beck’s attention, Hayden smiled.
“Did you know you can make diamonds out of tequila?” Beck asked her, still leaning on the bar.
She blinked, but the scientist in her considered that. “I’ve heard of scientists working on turning organic solutions like acetone and ethanol into diamonds. I guess tequila is ethanol.”
“Yes, it is.” Beck’s eyes fastened on her face as he spoke and they both leaned closer, across the bar. “Most people call bullshit when I tell them that.”
“It’s not bullshit, it’s science,” she said seriously. “I believe you.”
The corners of his lips lifted. “Thank you. Yes, eighty-proof tequila—”
“Which is forty percent alcohol,” Hayden added.
“Yes.” He paused to study her face again and she found herself mesmerized by his eyes and wicked smile. “It apparently has the ideal proportion of ethanol to water to create diamonds. They evaporate the tequila into vapor and then heat it and create diamonds.”
“Of course,” she breathed, also fascinated by this information. “It’s like the diamonds that rain on Jupiter.”
Now it was Beck’s turn to blink. “Say what?”
She smiled slowly and sipped her tequila. “Diamonds raining on Jupiter. And Saturn actually. There are different theories about why, but I believe that lightning turns methane into soot. Then as it falls, pressure on it increases and it turns to graphite. The chunks of falling graphite harden into diamonds. And it rains diamonds.”
Beck’s gaze on her mouth as she spoke almost had her forgetting how to talk.
“Wow. So Jupiter is covered with diamonds?”
She shook her head. “No. They would probably melt. But on Uranus and Neptune, which are colder, there might be diamonds.”
Beck’s smile tugged at something way down low inside her and they leaned even closer, close enough that she could see the flecks of amber in his brown eyes, his long, thick eyelashes, and a tiny mole on his right cheekbone. His smooth skin glowed and she longed to tug his long, lustrous hair out of the bun and run her hands through it.
“How do you know that even happens?” he murmured. “No one’s been to Jupiter.”
She smiled and lifted one shoulder. “It’s chemistry.”
Their eyes met and held and the air around them crackled with electricity. Beck’s eyes smoldered and Hayden’s heart bumped then raced, tension rising inside her.
“I like chemistry.”
“Me too.” She was a doctor of biochemistry, after all. But right now she was talking about the kind of chemistry that pulled her to Beck, made her skin tingle, and filled her lower belly with aching heat.
“You have an amazing smile,” Beck murmured.