An Unexpected Sin by Sarah Ballance

their flow, his tanned, lean torso remained damp. Lit to bronze by the dancing flame, he looked as delectable as any man had a right. And he was hers. The promise in those words stole some of her courage, but she forced herself to find his eyes. “My heart desires to know you fully,” she said, echoing his words from the night before. “To memorize every part of you…”
    Smiling, he took her hand and kissed her fingertips. “To learn your deepest pleasures and indulge in taking you there again and again. To hold you as you sleep and awaken with you in my arms.”
    She released the breath she held. “You remembered.”
    His smile turned devilish, and it was the last thing she saw before his lips grazed her cheek, then her ear. “Sweet Anne,” he said, “I have had years to think of little else.”
    A wall of emotion inside her chest threatened to burst, but she held fast. She would not fall apart—not even from joy.
    “You are trembling. Let me help you with your coat.”
    Overcome, she could only nod.
    He reached for the garment, easing it backward so she could slip her arms from the wet sleeves. Once she was free, he stepped away to spread the coat to dry. When he turned, she gasped.
    He had marks on his back.
    “Did I do that?” she asked, approaching to examine them more closely.
    “Do what?”
    “The marks on your back.”
    “I cannot see them, but I know of no other cause,” he said. “Would you like to do it again?”
    Despite the overwhelming heaviness of the day, she could do nothing but laugh.
    But for his teasing, Josiah remained serious. He reached for her and captured her hand, pulling her close. With one of his arms looped around her waist and the fingers of his other laced with hers, he walked her gently back toward the fire.
    They were like one of the great paintings—a shirtless man and a sodden woman with their grand ballroom in shambles around them. Their steps were like dancing. A sin, but she let him hold her anyway, for she knew one thing to be true.
    If she followed her heart, dancing would be the least of her sins that night.
    She sighed happily as he drew her close. Her life was simple, her material possessions few, but in his arms she was the richest woman in all the colonies. She could not forget the day’s sorrow, but in his arms she pieced together a way to live through it. Through the loss, everything had taken on brilliant hues. No fire had ever leapt so beautifully upon a hearth. Rain had never pounded with such vigor.
    No touch had ever been so sweet.
    She could live forever in this moment—with the wonder in his eyes, as if he, too, could not believe he held her. Nothing could feel better, at least until he leaned to kiss her.
    With the gentle caress of his lips against hers, she was lost.
    But in the most important of ways, it was then that she was well and truly found.

Chapter Eleven
    A wide range of emotions had long assaulted Josiah, but none more relentless than guilt. He had lived much of his life under its burden—for his mother’s death and then again for Samuel’s—and found it renewed most profoundly earlier that day after his walk with Anne’s father. It struck him again that moment on the road when he knew he should insist Anne return home, but one look into her pleading eyes and he could deny her nothing.
    Now, inexplicably, the guilt was gone.
    The fire was beginning to do its job, yet Anne still trembled. He knew of nothing but to hold her, so he did. Drawing near the fire, he kept her gathered close and together they swayed gently to the crackle of the fire and the thunder of the rain. In time, her shivers calmed, but the moment did not ask for words, so he gave it none.
    Perhaps there were none.
    She smelled of the rain. He breathed deeply, her scent just as indulgent as the feel of her wrapped so perfectly in his arms. Her height was such that her head nestled at his shoulder, and each of her deep breaths seemed to bring the soft swell of her