"I don't know about you, but I didn't answer a thousand questions about what I wanted in a wife to just give up."
She gives me a weak smile. "Me neither."
"So…here's what we're gonna do. You're gonna sleep in the bed, I'm gonna sleep on this couch, and we're gonna get some rest. In the morning, we're gonna order everyfuckingthing on the breakfast menu, and then figure out where we're going to live. We'll start over and forget about long hair, tits, and tattoos. Okay, jelly bean?"
Biting her lower lip, she nods. "Okay. I can do that."
I release her hand and she stands, the robe parting enough to give me a perfect view of her white lace bra, panties, stockings, and belt. And damn, she's actually a hot little thing. I bite my tongue to keep myself from making a sarcastic sex comment, which is really hard for me. Really hard.
She quickly pulls the robe closed and turns to me before walking off. "You can take the bed; you're bigger than me. I can sleep out here."
"No way. You get the bed. There's always extra pillows and blankets in the closet I can use. I'm fine. I've slept on way worse than this."
She walks to the closet and pulls out two pillows and a blanket, then comes back and hands them to me with a shy smile.
"Thanks."
"Goodnight, Talon."
She follows the path of forgotten, lonely, wilted rose petals to the bedroom—our honeymoon suite—and disappears as she closes the door softly behind her.
"Goodnight, Asia," I whisper after her, bunching the pillow up under my head and pulling the thin blanket over me.
So here I am, married to what is supposed to be the woman of my dreams, and I'm still sleeping on a couch in a hotel room. Alone. Without my Egyptian cotton sheets. Or my wife.
Somehow the team managed to find the one woman on the East Coast who doesn't want to fuck me. Or do anything else with me, for that matter.
Well-played, romance experts. Well-played.
Chapter 10
Asia
Dim light wakes me, beaming through the slit between the closed curtains. It takes me a few squinty moments to remember where I am.
The honeymoon suite.
I hold my left hand out and stare at the foreign ring, then slowly pull it off to read the inscription inside the band. In the craziness of yesterday, I had forgotten that a few weeks before the wedding we were asked to have a few words inscribed in our future spouse's band, to give us something to look back on later when hopefully our marriages were successful.