Page 78 of Cocky August Rake

His hands paused. “He is a striking fellow.”

Rose met his eyes, laughing again, then, noticing the wet linen stretched across his shoulders, her laughter trailed off.

When he caught her looking, Rose busied herself with her gloves. They were soaked through. She tugged at one fingertip, but the wet kid leather clung stubbornly to her skin.

“Here.”

Reginald shifted closer, his knee brushing hers.

He took her hand, working the glove loose one finger at a time. There was nothing improper in it. Nothing she had not allowed dozens of men to do.

But Reginald’s head was bent over her hand, his rough fingertips careful against her skin, and Rose could scarcely breathe.

At last, the glove came free.

Her fingers were pale with cold.

“So are you.”

But he wasn’t. Unless she imagined the heat coming off him.

Reginald enclosed her hand between both of his and rubbed warmth into her fingers. Rose watched the movement, then turned one of his hands over.

The pale scar she’d noticed the first night she’d met him.

She traced it. “What happened?”

“Rope burn. It festered for a time.”

“For a time?”

He shrugged. “The surgeon cut away what he could. I kept the hand.”

He said it as though that settled the matter.

Rose touched the edge of the scar with her thumb. Out at sea, there would have been no physician to summon. No safe harbor nearby. Only his crew, their limited stores, and miles of water in every direction.

He could have died from something so small.

Her gaze returned to his hands. Large and callused, shaped by rope and hard work. The hands of a sailor, not a lord.

Strong. Powerful.

And when she remembered how tightly they’d gripped her thighs, the carriage seemed to shrink around them.

Slowly, he lifted his gaze.

There was nothing proper in his eyes now.

It reminded her of the garden, when he had not known who she was.

London passed in a blur beyond the watery windows. His knee remained pressed against hers, and her hand lay warm between his.

And in that moment in time, she wanted nothing more than for him to kiss her. Not simply because he desired her, but because he needed to be close to her.

Reginald searched her face.

“Please,” she whispered. “Kiss me.”