All I'll Ever Need Read online

  She had been fascinated by the statue of Laocoön and his sons that they had seen in the Vatican City while on honeymoon in Rome. Not because of the tragic subject matter but because of how much Laocoön’s body had resembled her husband’s. If not for his significantly more impressive penis, Linc’s body could have been the flesh and blood replica of the doomed marble priest. Her husband really was the perfect specimen of a man, his amazing body honed through many hours of hard labor and physical exertion.

  He was a bit of a Renaissance man; intelligent, creative, and athletic. He was a keen sportsman who enjoyed pitting his body against nature by surfing, snowboarding, and running, as well as against others in the form of boxing and soccer. He was a sought-after landscape architect, responsible for some of the most beautiful scenery around the world. One of the many reasons June believed that their marriage had collapsed was because his work often took him away for long periods at a time. Not the main reason, but certainly a pertinent one.

  She lay, with her cheek resting on the palm of one hand, secretly watching him; longing for him, aching for him. He removed his smart watch, ran a careless hand through his thatch of dark brown hair and stepped out of sight into the shower.

  And then she listened, imagining him lathering up all that velvety skin, picturing swathes of foam sloughing off those hard slabs of muscles. She had seen him shower often, and when she wasn’t sharing it with him, distracting him, he was thorough and perfunctory. Her throat dried up as she remembered the way his hands ran over his body, spreading soap under his arms, over his chest…down until he cupped himself and washed over, under, and between his most intimate areas. When she had showered with him, she would often do the task for him, which had led to so many wonderful distractions.

  This time, there was no preventing the groan from escaping, and the hand on her breast drifted south, until it was squeezed between her thighs, her middle finger pressed against her throbbing clitoris as she tried to dispel the painful ache. Her breath came in soft, shuddery gasps and helpless little whimpers as she rocked against her inadequate finger.

  The shower stopped and she snatched her hand away, resuming her pretense of sleep. So hard to do when the steam from the shower drifted into the room, enveloping her in the wonderfully familiar scent of sandalwood and sage. He stepped back into view, his wet skin gleaming in the harsh light of the bathroom. He had a towel thrown over his head and he was rubbing it vigorously over his freshly-washed hair. The rest of him was still gloriously naked and she allowed herself to watch unabashedly. Knowing that she would soon lose this privilege.

  He tossed the wet towel into the provided hamper and dragged a clean one off the rail, patting himself dry. He did a terrible job as always—preferring to air dry—and clicked off the bathroom light before making his way in the dark toward the bed. June forced herself to maintain slow regular breaths as she tried to keep up the ruse that she was asleep.

  Cold air hit her back as he lifted the covers and she felt the bed dip as he crept in beside her.

  Naked.

  He was naked.

  She knew that he slept naked but, considering their situation, she had expected him to at least don some boxers.

  But he hadn’t. And now she was sharing a bed with her sexy, hard-bodied, extremely virile, naked, soon-to-be-ex-husband.

  It didn’t help that he smelled amazing and that he gave off enough warmth to heat the entire room. All she wanted to do was curl up against him and cry. Permit him to give her the comfort she had denied herself for so, so long. Then allow him to touch her and kiss her and make her forget all the pain and loss. And the absolute gut-wrenching heartache.

  “Jupe?” His voice was quiet, not quite level, and held absolutely no expectation of a response from her. She fought to keep breathing deep and even.

  He sighed. The sound seemed filled with sadness and despair, and she felt his fingers in her hair, just a brief touch, as he entwined one of her curls on his finger. He loved doing that. He had often told her—usually while she was lamenting its uncontrollability—that her crazy mane of curly black hair was one of his favorite things about her. So it didn’t surprise her that he found an excuse to touch it now.

  He sighed again, this time in resignation, and his touch retreated. He remained on his side of the bed. She remained on hers.

  And only after she heard the first quiet snore from him, nearly fifteen minutes later, did she allow herself to relax enough to fall asleep.

  Chapter Seven

  Safe.

  June couldn’t remember the last time she had felt so safe. The sense of well-being permeated her body and soul and she smiled, relishing the warmth and security. In her dream she was being held, protected from every outside element that wanted to hurt her. Sheltered from pain and heartache and despair. Shielded from every small and large misery that life chose to pelt at her.

  “Don’t leave me.” The words were quiet, heartfelt, and filled with the anguish that she was trying so hard to remain inured to. “Please.”

  The soft please resonated with her. And she heard herself sigh, and her brow furrowed. She didn’t like the direction this dream was taking.

  “Juniper.” Her full name—so rarely used by anyone—emerged on an exhalation of breath, seconds before she felt warm, familiar lips on her own. Her eyes fluttered open and she found herself staring straight into Linc’s face. He was so close she wasn’t able to distinguish between individual features. All she could do was taste him, feel him…want him.

  Her arms lifted and surrounded his huge shoulders. Her fingernails dug into his back as she opened her mouth to his questing tongue. His kiss felt like fire and his tongue was a flame. Warm, alive and licking its way into her mouth on a scorching, single-minded path of mutual destruction.

  June was helpless in the face of that blazing trail of shared desire. She couldn’t deny him this kiss. She couldn’t deny herself.

  He turned them both, and the slight movement left his naked, masculine hardness cradled between her wantonly spread thighs. June bent her knees and trailed one foot down his hard calf. She planted her other foot flat on the mattress and thrust against him. Hungry for him and wanting him to know that.

  He made a harsh sound in the back of his throat and his lips trailed down her neck, over her collarbone, and honed in on one of the straining peaks of her breasts. His mouth clamped over the burning hot ember of her nipple through the soft cotton of her sleepshirt and she arched off the bed in reaction.

  His hands desperately sought, and found, the hem of the nightie and he soon—with a little cooperative shimmying from her—had her divested of the garment, which he tossed aside carelessly. She felt equal parts sexy and vulnerable laying there in just her cotton bikini panties.

  “I missed you,” he whispered fervently. “I missed us.”

  “There’s no us,” she felt compelled to remind him, not wanting him to mistake this for more than it was. “Not anymore. Not in a very long time.”

  She reached between their bodies and grasped his hard, hot length in her palm, stroking it appreciatively, but he was no longer kissing her, or touching her, or anything really. He held himself away from her, his hands braced on the mattress on either side of her head, testament to his upper body strength. Her eyes moved from where she still had his straining erection clasped in her hand up to his face. His expression reflected several conflicting emotions: desire, anger, agony, pleasure and—most confusing of all—fear.

  “Linc?” she whispered, her voice tentative. He shook his head and lifted himself all the way off her and shifted to the side. He collapsed onto his back and folded his arms behind his head, glaring at the ceiling while his hard cock throbbed angrily against his flat abdomen.

  Every muscle in his body was taut with what she assumed was a combination of fury and frustration, and she flipped onto her side to stare at his unrelenting profile as he continued to glower up at nothing.

  She reached out a hesitant hand and placed it
on his chest. His heart thumped against her palm; the fast, heavy beat synchronized with the throbbing of his still very erect penis.

  “Don’t touch me.” His voice held a grating note of warning and she snatched her hand back immediately.

  She was curled up on her side, watching as he fought to bring himself back under control. Her own body was still on fire with need for him, her nipples hurt, her thighs were slick with her own juices, and she felt swollen and heavy where her femininity throbbed in sympathy with his hardness.

  “No us, huh?” he suddenly asked, his voice laced with scorn and resentment. “You have the nerve to say that to me while you have my dick in your hand? No us? What the fuck does that even mean?”

  “Our marriage was never real. You know that.” She tried to keep her voice calm, but she could hear the sharp, high note of betrayal and anguish in it.

  “What? How in Christ’s name can you say the last two and a half years of our lives wasn’t real? We exchanged vows, Jupe. Made promises to each other.”

  “Promises that neither of us fulfilled.” She pushed herself upright and drew her knees up to her chest, feeling too vulnerable lying open and nearly naked beside him.

  “What do you mean? Are you saying you… is there—” He swallowed heavily as he tried to formulate his words. “Are you seeing someone? Are you in love with another man?”

  Say yes, the tiny voice at the back of her head prompted. It would be so easy to say yes. It would end the discussion, stop whatever this was. An attempted reconciliation? Fix what couldn’t be fixed? She wasn’t sure.

  “No. Of course not,” she said, unable to utter the lie. There was so much else going on between them, she couldn’t add to it with such a despicable untruth.

  He sat up as well, dragging a sheet over his indefatigable hard-on. She could see the naked relief on his face at her reply.

  “Do you think I cheated?”

  “No.”

  “Then where the hell is all this coming from?”

  She shook her head in response to that frustrated question and pushed her tangled hair out of her face before peering at the bedside clock. It was nearly nine in the morning.

  “We should get ready for breakfast. Chrissy has a full schedule for the ladies today. And you have that male bonding thing with James and the guys.”

  “I don’t need to fucking bond with James, he’s my best friend. This is more important, Jupe. Stop deflecting. You drop a bomb on me and expect me to just, what? Accept it? I can’t do that. I want answers. I need to know what the hell is going on with you. With us—Don’t you fucking say it!” The last was hastily added when she opened her mouth to interrupt him again. “Don’t you dare say there’s no us.”

  “Linc,” she said, her voice steeped in misery.

  “Yesterday, on the trip up, things were fine. Everything seemed fucking fine and then we get here and you’re telling me you’re expecting a divorce? I don’t accept that. I refuse to accept that! How dare you do this?”

  “How could you think things were fine?” she suddenly raged, finally losing her temper, unable to believe he could be so willfully blind. “How? Things haven’t been fine in well over a year. After the first miscarriage you could barely look at me and the only thing that seemed to be working was the sex. And it got worse with each loss. Then, after the last one…”

  She impatiently swiped at a few errant tears and shook her head bitterly. “We haven’t shared a bed in six months, Linc. Six months that you mostly spent out of the country, by the way. And when you were in the country the only time we did spend together was when we were with your family. We rarely spoke and we never touched. How is anything about that fine?”

  “I thought it was what you wanted. I thought I was giving you space, respecting your boundaries. Fucking being supportive.”

  “I was lonely,” she confessed, and his shoulders slumped as he shoved a hand through his hair. She had always loved it when he did that. It left his hair adorably messy and gave him a boyish appeal that was usually absent from the stern, well put-together man she had married.

  “Sweetheart,” he muttered, his voice rife with misery. “I was lonely too.”

  Chapter Eight

  His words gave her pause and she stared at him for a long moment before blinking slowly.

  “You were?”

  “I—”

  Her phone tinkled gently from the nightstand, interrupting what he had been about to say. June sent the device a mute, frustrated glare.

  “It’s Chrissy,” she informed him, and he shook his head curtly before waving toward the still-ringing phone.

  “You should get it. It’s her wedding weekend and it really should be about her and James.”

  June hesitated for a moment before nodding and reaching for her phone.

  “Chrissy?” She watched, with a lump in her throat—barely concentrating on her sister-in-law’s excited babbling—as Linc threw his head back for a brief moment. He screwed his eyes shut and his jaw clenched. He remained that way for a few moments before getting up abruptly. The taut muscles in his butt and thighs worked as he resolutely moved toward the bathroom, snagging his overnight bag en-route.

  This time, he shut the door purposefully behind him and the deliberate barrier jarred June out of her trancelike state. She tried to focus on what Chrissy was saying; brunch, spa, wedding rehearsal, followed by an early dinner. The dinner was Chrissy and James’s nod to tradition. They did not want to see each other after eight p.m. on the eve of their wedding.

  Feeling guilty about her distractedness in the face of the younger woman’s effervescent excitement, June forced herself to be attentive, even though her eyes frequently strayed back to the bathroom door which she willed to open again with a fervency that both embarrassed and surprised her.

  But the barrier remained firmly in place for the duration of the short conversation, and remained so a further five minutes after Chrissy had disconnected the call. June took that opportunity to drag her nightie back on and tried to tie back her tangled mass of hair.

  Linc eventually emerged freshly-shaven and dressed in pair of faded jeans, like the pair he had worn the day before, along with his favorite t-shirt—a vintage Cobra Wants You GI Joe t-shirt that June had given him for his thirtieth birthday two years ago. She’d been gratified by how much he loved the silly thing. It had been a rare find and June had won a fierce bidding war over the never-before-worn collector’s item.

  She knew that he wore it only at events he deemed special. He probably thought that because he couldn’t wear it to his sister’s wedding, the day before the big event would have to suffice. He shrugged into a dark gray fleece hoodie, leaving it unzipped.

  He lifted his eyes to where she sat curled up on one of the large overstuffed chairs and shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. He rocked back and forth on his heels as he watched her silently.

  June returned his inscrutable gaze uncertainly. Not sure what he wanted from her.

  “You mean the world to me, Jupe. I feel like maybe you don’t know that. Or maybe you lost sight of it. Or we lost sight of each other. But I want you to have no doubt about my feelings for you.”

  You mean the world to me? Linc had always used these general, perfectly adequate terms to describe his “feelings” for her.

  I care about you. You’re special to me. And the classic, you mean a lot to me. Lukewarm, generic terms that belonged on Hallmark cards commemorating fond friendships. It hadn’t bothered her in the beginning. It had felt like the love she’d craved from him. Like the love she felt for him. But throughout their marriage, getting him to admit to more than fondness and affection for her had been like pulling teeth. The closest she had gotten to hearing what she wanted from him was on the night of her first miscarriage, only a few short months after their wedding. When she had nearly bled to death and he had clung to her hand all night, looking strained and wrung out.

  She had floated in that space between awarenes
s and sleep, and had heard him implore her to get better.

  You have to get through this. I can’t live without you, Jupe. Please don’t leave me.

  She had fought against the drowsiness and forced her eyes open to look at him. Wanting to see his face, to see if his expression matched the naked terror she had heard in his voice.

  But other than a brief flash of pure relief when he had realized that she was awake, all she had received from him was warmth and sincere happiness that she was doing well. None of what she had thought she’d heard in his voice and words.

  Her second and third miscarriages had seen him sitting stoically beside her without any expression on his face. Holding her hand but not speaking.

  And then, six months ago, he had shown up a day after the miscarriage, full of apologies because he had been away on a business trip. He had reassured himself that she was okay and that was when he had mentioned surrogacy. Even now, the memory ripped the heart and soul right out of her.

  Surrogacy.

  Because the problem was clearly with June. She couldn’t carry a baby to term. Linc did his part. His seed took. But her womb? It was hostile territory for any nascent life. Three months, that was the longest any of her babies had survived. Three months, and then they were gone. And June was left with an empty womb, empty arms, and another hole in her increasingly ragged soul.

  “I’ve made up my mind, Linc,” she said in response to his words, dismissing Linc’s tepid proclamation of affection with a shrug. He looked stung by her words and he blinked a few times before shaking his head.

  “I can’t bring myself to believe that this is the end for us.”

  “Do you remember the first thing you said after proposing to me?” she asked, keeping her voice conversational even though she was feeling more than a little confrontational. This wasn’t the time or place for the discussions he wanted to have, but she needed to remind him of his priorities. Of his number one priority.