Page 46 of Cocky August Rake

In that moment, however, he couldn’t for the life of him remember why.

Miss Darling crossed the remaining space between them.

After a moment, she then lifted her hand, paused, and settled her fingertips on his chest, just above his heart.

The touch was light, and yet his entire body tightened beneath it.

“I have thought about that night with you in the garden,” she said. She did not look away. “Far more often than I ought.”

Reginald’s hand closed at his side.

“Why?”

“Because I still want you.”

Desire surged through him, so immediate and so brutal he half-expected it to knock him over.

He looked toward the door, then back at her.

Had she known precisely what she was doing when she brought him here?

Of course she had.

And he had followed willingly.

But when Rose’s fingers moved slowly over his waistcoat, he caught her wrist.

“You enjoy this,” he said.

Her eyes darkened. “This?”

“Seduction.”

A startled laugh escaped her.

Then it faded.

Her fingers stilled against his lapel, and uncertainty passed across her face—as if the answer surprised her as much as it would him.

“I do not hate it,” she said. “Usually.”

Reginald watched her closely, needing to know if she’d answer truthfully.

Miss Darling shook her head, a faint flush rising in her cheeks. “I have known modest pleasure, at times. But never has the want of it kept me awake.” Her gaze lifted to his. “Not until I met you.”

He should have stepped away.

He had spent his entire adult life avoiding precisely this sort of arrangement.

While other men kept mistresses, visited brothels, or married the women chosen for them, Reginald had relied on his own hand.

He’d refused to satisfy himself by taking advantage of a woman who had no real freedom to refuse him.

But Miss Darling smelled of roses and something warmer beneath them—the scent he had remembered far too clearly since the garden.

His body remembered too, and damn his eyes, but he was hard enough that standing this close to her had become an act of endurance.

Still, when she tried to move her hand lower, Reginald stopped her.