“Seven-point-eight?” She drew her eyebrows together, appalled. No one in the world would rate a kiss like that as a seven-point-eight.
“Better keep practicing,” he added with a wink that warmed her to her toes.
“Practice makes perfect,” Roger, the parrot, added.
She had a feeling he wasn’t wrong.
Chapter Seventeen
KNOX
Despite the factBax had gone rogue with his pirate antics—oh, they’d continued through the reception—Courtney and Irina did not kill him, and Knox only had to referee once. That wasn’t even with Bax, that was with the bird.
Honest, if that had been a real wedding with an actual love match, he probably wouldn’t have had the kind of fun they’d had. He had a feeling the reason today was so great was… Irina.
He used the keycard to let them into the suite at the Four Seasons where they’d start their honeymoon. Start, and finish, since Irina began rehearsals immediately.
They hadn’t needed the bell staff to help with their luggage, as they’d only packed minimally for the night. Not like this was a real honeymoon or anything. Real in the sense they’d just gotten married. Not real in the sense that there was going to be no hanky-panky.
The bags set near the table, he moved to the curtains to look out onto downtown Denver.
He should pick a bedroom and change into sweatpants or something. Maybe even see if Irina was hungry, and he’d order up room service.
That’s what he should do…find a menu. The second-best thing to honeymoon sex was good food. Or so he figured.
“I’m so ready to get out of this thing.” Irina came from one of the bedrooms pulling at the bodice of the crimson dress, trying to turn it so she could get to the buttons and having no luck at all.
What was the protocol for something like this? Did he offer to help her get out of her clothes? Was that copacetic?
“Can I get your help?” Irina asked, getting flustered, her cheeks turning red as she still tried to turn the dress and had no luck because her breasts got in the way.
Good to know, the groom helped with this type of thing even when things weren’t going further than the bridal extraction.
He stepped up and worked the buttons free one by one.
Unfortunately, being this close to her, alone with her, reminded him of kissing her. He would not allow himself to think of that kiss they’d had to punctuate the ceremony, or how he’d ranked her lower only because he’d been certain she was going to do the same and he worried about his pride.
Honestly? She was correct, it’d been a ten. With Irina things were always a ten. The thought made his throat get fuzzy.
The way she’d melted into him so easily that he’d forgotten where they were, what they were doing, and why they should stop. The fine hairs of his arms stood to attention at only the thought of her mouth on his.
The dress was held together with pearl buttons slipped through a thin layer of some kind of string. While he could play keyboard and guitar like nobody’s business, his hands weren’t used to trying to unhook teensy little buttons one at a time.
“Damn,” he said, fighting with a fifth button. These babies did not want to release easily. No, they seemed to want to hold her close and not let her go.
He could relate, seeing as she smelled like coconut and vanilla with an extra scoop of cherries.
Her hair was still curled and pinned, but she'd released some of the clips as soon as they hit the hotel room, so some of the locks fell over her shoulders, all the way down to her cleavage. Her eyes had been green earlier; now they were slate gray with blue flecks.
“This is your real eye color?” he asked, working on the next button.
At this rate, they’d be standing there all night.
She nodded and grunted when he pulled the button so it’d give him enough space to release. “Uh-huh.”
“I like it.” They were the kind of understated pretty that took a guy by surprise.
She shook her head. “Ugh. Really? No.”
