Free Yesterday by Lora Leigh Page B

hurt her. It wasn t enough that even her femininity had been lost in his death.
    That her hormones had died with him. It wasn t enough that her life had revolved around only his memory and the child he left her.
    No. It had to up the ante. It had to bring Devon to her doorstop. It had to re-awaken her body, make her remember what it was like to do more than dream of a man s touch. Do more than merely write about the needs she had so desperately prayed Blake would return and still. Not, Fate had make it worse. It had to also re-awaken the desperate, soul-driving devotion she had known for only one man.
    She let her tears flow then. Alyssa, her dearest friend from school had taken Mike that morning for a day with her two children. There was no danger of her son seeing her lapse of control, or the pain that tore past her chest in hard, desperate sobs.
    She paced to the edge of the deck, her head lowered as she leaned against the side of the house. Blake s house. His home. Blake s land. Blake s child and Blake s woman. But Blake was dead. Everywhere but in her soul.
    And where did that leave her with Devon? Her body pulsed at the thought of his touch.
    She ached, burned. She could feel the emptiness in her cunt, like a gnawing hunger to have him fill her with the steely strength of his cock.
    Her breasts were swollen, her nipples hard, the remembered feel of his mouth enveloping them, his hot tongue stroking them was enough to drive her insane with the need to push him to her bed and force her flesh into his mouth as she forced his cock up her pussy.
    And she would see Blake. When he grimaced in arousal, his lips drawing back from his teeth on a muted snarl of lust she would see Blake. When he whispered her name, when his hands held her, when her release tore through her, it would always be Blake. Just Blake.
    Blake
    Blake fought his need to go to her. Her sobs, her pleas, they were more than he could bear. She was beating herself up for loving him, for needing him, for fucking knowing him, and his hands were tied.
    He moved away from the door that led to the deck and paced back through the silent house. He couldn t do it any longer. He thought he could come back, pick up the remains of his life and the woman he loved and go on. But he hadn t counted on the strength of Anna s love for him, or the misery it would bring her.
    It humbled him. It broke his heart.
    He couldn t continue the charade. He hadn t expected this, to be honest. He hadn t expected that her celibate life had been for him. That her love for him had been so deep, so strong in such a short amount of time. While his had been there, he believed, from the first day he had met her. Barely sixteen, staring up at him as though he held the sun and the moon in his hands.
    He shook his head as he returned to the garden he had been plowing. It would be a late one, but in time to enjoy the harvest and to put it up as needed. Besides, the physical work would him figure out how to tell her the truth. He trusted her with his very soul.
    The truth was something he knew she would never tell. But would she ever forgive him?

Chapter Fifteen
    Like Pandora s box, once the locks to her passions and her needs had been opened, Anna found them impossible to hide from. They were a plague, a building disease inside her mind and body that tormented her day and night. Had Devon pushed her, had he made demands or insisted on continuing the relationship, she felt she could have fought it, could have made a strong stand against it. But he did neither.
    He was as patient as the long summer days and just as damned hot. He filled her daydreams and all her dark fantasies and made her pussy throb with the need to be filled.
    But it wasn t Devon s face she saw in those dreams, it was Blake s. It was Blakes voice she heard, Blake s hands that touched her, it was always Blake. And it was destroying her.
    The garden s planted. It was late in the evening, three days later when he returned to the house,