The Need

Author's Note

Some small print.

I am neither a physician nor a psychologist. The medical and psychological elements within this story are fictionalised narrative devices, created to serve character and theme. They should not be read as accurate, diagnostic, or representative of any real-world condition, treatment, or clinical practice.

This is a character-driven story, not an erotic one. While it contains sexual elements, they exist to serve the narrative rather than titillation.

I am my own editor, and I expect that to show.

As always, constructive feedback, both positive and negative, is welcome.

I hope you enjoy it.

AWBB

Chapter 1

Richard Thompson tried to attract his fiancée Jane Carter's attention. She was elsewhere again, sitting on the settee, still in the dress she had worn to work that morning, staring at the television with her half-eaten dinner on her lap. Her skin was dark from the fake tan she applied religiously. Her face, the face he adored, was lit off and on by the images on the screen.

She was tall. Five foot nine. Quite muscular compared to other women he'd known, too, though how she achieved it, he wasn't sure. He'd assumed she was just genetically gifted. One of those people who could look like that without really trying. She did go to the gym, but not to lift weights. It's not like she was properly hench or anything, just toned. Really, really toned. At least his biceps were bigger than hers, he thought to himself, but only just. Even still, in his eyes, she was a goddess.

They ran together sometimes. Richard enjoyed that, but was always aware just how much better Jane was. She flowed over the pavement like water, feet barely touching it. If she ever wanted him to go faster, she never mentioned it. If anything, she made it easier for him.

She would match his pace without comment, occasionally shortening her stride. When he sped up, she sped up. When he slowed, she slowed. She never surged ahead and forced him to chase her. She never looked back with that bright, effortless smile that would have made it clear she was holding something back.

It was only in small moments that the truth showed itself.

Once, their washing machine had started leaking. Richard came home expecting the usual chaos. A puddle. A half-panicked call. The appliance still wedged under the counter, too heavy to shift without a second pair of hands.

Instead, he walked into the kitchen and found it already moved. Not far, just enough to get behind it. A neat gap. The floor wiped dry. The toolbox was on the table, open, laid out like she'd been waiting for him to arrive and do the part that was supposed to be his.

She was standing there in leggings and an old T-shirt, hair tied back, looking mildly annoyed rather than flustered.

"I didn't know what to do," she said, which was clearly a lie. She had known exactly what to do. She'd done it. All she wanted from him was the ending. Him arriving to make it official. The man of the house signing off.

Richard had knelt down, peered at the pipework, and played along. He'd tightened something that probably didn't need tightening and declared it solved. Jane had kissed him on the cheek, thanked him as if he'd rescued her, and they slid the machine back in together, him barely pushing at all.

Jane wasn't the emotional type. Richard was more likely to tear up at something stupid in a film than she was. She liked to kiss and cuddle, liked being close, but she didn't reach for him the way some women did. When she wanted him, it wasn't usually gentle.

It was intense. Focused. Almost impatient.

She liked to be on top. It suited her. Like her body preferred to lead rather than follow.

At first, Richard had told himself it was confidence. That it was modern. That it was a kind of freedom. And maybe it was. But sometimes, when she looked down at him, eyes bright and fixed on his, he got the sense she wasn't indulging herself at all.

When it was over, she would settle back into his arms with a contentment that looked too much like relief to be simple satisfaction.

"Darling?" he ventured.

"Jane?" Still nothing.

He stood up from his chair and slumped down beside her. Jane blinked twice, registering that something had changed.

"Jane!" Richard tried again. Jane looked towards him with a smile that didn't reach her eyes.

"Everything OK?" Richard asked. The last couple of weeks had been a bit difficult. Jane had sometimes been aloof or angry, then loving, then intensely amorous, often within minutes.

"Yes," Jane said, a bit snippily, then she sighed, clearly recognising the tone and that simply asking how she was didn't really deserve that sort of response. "Sorry. Tough day. Real issues with a pension provider. Just..." She faltered into a shrug.

"Sorry to hear that," Richard said, and put his arm along the back of the sofa, inviting Jane to lean into him. After two or three seconds of fairly obvious hesitation, Jane snuggled in with what he hoped was a contented sigh.

Richard wondered whether this evening was a good time for this conversation. Children. His parents had both passed away before he was twenty-two. His only real remaining relative, his father's older brother, died not long after that, leaving him his rather splendid flat in St John's Wood where they currently lived. His concern was that he really didn't want to leave things too late. If he followed his immediate family, he would be lucky to see fifty. He couldn't think of anything worse than leaving his children as children, when they still needed a father figure.

He steeled himself. It needed to be done.

"Jane," he began resolutely. "Are you... are you happy?"

There was a silence. He felt her body tense slightly, and she stiffly moved away from him to the other end of the settee. He supposed this was to be expected. She came from money and lineage. Not the kind you earned, the kind you inherited. Her mother had a title somewhere in the family tree. Her father had built an empire out of spreadsheets and nerve. Indeed, it was for his firm that she worked, largely advising multimillionaire bankers how to accumulate even more wealth. Dealing with feelings and happiness was probably not something she was used to doing.

She gathered herself and sat primly, her hands in her lap, her right-hand thumb and index finger holding the band of her engagement ring.

"Honestly, yes. I know I've been a bit... weird... the last few weeks, but work has been hell and, I don't know, I've had a lot of headaches. I understand why you're asking, and I'm sorry if you feel I've been difficult in any way."

She looked up at him, eyes searching for a reaction, but not desperate for his forgiveness.

"I just wondered..." He gulped, tension rising. "If you still wanted me. I don't want you to feel pressured by me or anyone. I know how much your parents are looking forward to our wedding."

Richard shrugged. This felt like a tipping point.

"Of course I still want you!" Jane nearly shouted, irritation flaring again, her entire body shaking with what Richard thought could only be fury. With visible effort, she controlled herself. "I am happy. I promise," she finished quietly.

"Okay," Richard said, exhaling the breath he'd been holding. "It's just... I talked about not wanting to put you under pressure, but there's something I need to talk to you about. About us. Hopefully a good thing, but I have to sort this out for my own peace of mind."

Jane looked at him across the settee, still rigid, but certainly not the confident woman he thought he knew.

"Children?" she accurately guessed. Her clipped St Paul's Girls' School accent was more evident than the way she normally spoke with him at home.

"Yes." Richard grinned sheepishly. He looked out of the window and could see a two of Lord's floodlight pylons illuminating the sky where a match of The Hundred was marring that hallowed ground. "You know about what happened with my family, and there's no suggestion I could suffer the same fate as my folks, but I need to know that you still want them... and realistically when we could consider, you know, trying. After our wedding, I mean. You're younger than me and I don't want to, if the worst comes to the worst, be gone if they still need me. But I know you have your job and you're still building your career, and I don't want to force you to make a decision on that..." He stumbled to a close, hoping his rambling had conveyed enough for Jane to deal with, when she was obviously going through something herself.

Jane was still. Nearly frozen. For nearly a minute, Richard waited, watching her upright, unmoving body.

"Five years," she eventually said. "Would five years be acceptable?" Her voice was clipped again, like she was determining how long a senior manager at UBS could tie his money down for. She turned towards him, not really to judge his reaction, but because that was what you did when you were waiting for a reply.

Five years. Longer than he'd hoped. Still, it was an answer. Jane would only be twenty-five when the wedding took place. She was promising him her thirties and beyond. He would only be thirty-five. He could absolutely live with that.

"Five is perfect. Thank you," he said with relief and a smile.

Jane smiled back, possibly the first real smile he'd seen from her in a couple of weeks. She stood and faced him. Reaching behind her back, Richard heard the zip of her dress run and watched as it slipped down her strong body. She unclipped the lacy black bra and let it fall away, revealing her high, round C-cup breasts. Lastly, she kicked off her matching panties, leaving her naked.

She had a very prominent clitoris, flushed and insistent against the pale skin around it. Richard always noticed it first. In his head, it was a glacé cherry, bright and impossible to ignore. He tried not to stare, but he never quite managed. It felt like her body was always a fraction ahead of the moment, already asking, already ready.

He swallowed, his mind blanking in the familiar way it did when she undressed like this.

"Come to bed?" she asked, almost matter-of-fact rather than seductive, and extended her perfectly manicured right hand to him.

Richard took her hand in his, standing as he did so.

"Lead the way, Miss Carter."

Chapter 2

Working from home every day had its positives and negatives. The biggest was not having to traverse the City morning and evening with several million other souls. Not that Richard had anything like the worst London commute. St John's Wood to Southwark was a few easy stops along the Jubilee Line, then less than fifteen minutes on foot at the other end.

Still, he thought with satisfaction, there was no need to battle with Jane for shower time if he didn't have to. It wasn't unusual for him to spend the morning in his pyjamas and dressing gown, go for a run at lunchtime, then shower and work the afternoon in something more appropriate.

He reflected on his marriage. How it was, largely, good.

Jane was a loving wife, if a busy one. She worked hard for her money, and she did well. Usually double his salary, though it varied with the whims of the very rich and how much they were willing to pay to feel looked after. Jane insisted on meeting clients face-to-face rather than over video. She said it was something her dad, Terrance, pushed, and when Richard finally asked, Terrance confirmed it readily.

"Most of the younger ones couldn't give a stuff," he said airily, as if the fees they were charged weren't what paid for the champagne in his hand. "Get them ten percent per annum and they'll leave you to it. The older boys, though. No. You've still got to make them feel special. A lunch at a decent restaurant usually does it, but they like to feel the paper in their hands while you tell them just how much more disgustingly rich they are now than they were last year."

Terrance laughed at himself, since he was probably even more revoltingly wealthy than most of his clients.

With that, Richard decided his investigation into Jane's work habits didn't need to go any further. Her company website made a big thing of personal relationships and face-to-face meetings: trust, transparency, body language, all of that. Jane had once explained it as something to do with attitudes to risk not matching what people said out loud.

Terrance had asked one day whether Richard and Jane were thinking of selling up and moving somewhere bigger. Richard had been taken aback. Jane owned her own flat in their building, but it was mostly an expensive storage unit, or somewhere for friends to stay. They lived in Richard's.

In fact, it was how he'd met her. He'd seen her wrestling with an oversized pot plant in the temperamental lift and decided he couldn't let the chance go. He'd offered her dinner so she wasn't left alone after the movers finished. She hadn't had much furniture then. First home, pretty much straight out of university.

Richard wasn't stupid. He knew his flat and Jane's were worth a ludicrous amount of money for what they were, but Terrance had spoken as if they could casually find another five million and buy a townhouse in Belgravia. Richard had done a modicum of research, confirmed that they couldn't, and tried to put it out of his mind.

He sighed and went back to work, running through another under-annotated batch of C# Tom had asked him to debug. Tom wasn't his boss. They were just the senior guys in the team, left to make sure what got submitted wasn't complete garbage. Most of the team were decent enough. Richard had interviewed half of them himself, but they hated notes, and sometimes their error handling and memory usage needed help.

His IM pinged.

TomB:Alright, Biscuit? Is The Trouble about today?

RichT:Wotcher, Grave. Yep and nope. I'm fine and she's in Cheshire chasing the money up there until tomorrow, so I'm home alone.

TomB:Right. Pint later?

RichT:Sure.

TomB:Dragon? Six?

RichT:See you there.

Rich liked Tom. He was solid. He was from the East End, though he'd always been a bit suspicious of Jane. Richard assumed it was a class thing, which was fair enough. Tom's parents had a council flat straight out of Only Fools and Horses, though they'd managed to buy it by the time he was born. Tom himself lived a good jaunt south of the river, so Richard always appreciated that he was willing to come into town to meet up.

Richard picked up his phone and texted Jane.

How's it going? Going to meet Tom for a pint later. Hope they're signing on with you like good little (rich) boys! xx

Within a couple of minutes, Jane replied.

Going well, thank you! Two out of two signed on, two more meetings today and four more tomorrow 🤞. Will be home late! Say hi to Tom for me and don't get too drunk! xxx

***

Richard wandered into The Dragon at five past six. Tom was already on a stool by the bar. Two pints sat in front of him, and an empty stool waited at his right. Richard took it.

"Evening."

"Hey, Rich. Good to see you, mate."

"You too. Cheers." Richard took the pint Tom slid across.

"Cheers."

Tom, as far as Richard knew, was a confirmed bachelor. A girl at university had messed him around and he'd never really recovered. He didn't want to know about women after that, so their conversations stayed safely in the realms of music, sport, and, with much derision, work, even though they both liked their jobs. In the early days, Richard had watched him turn down several advances from women Richard would have happily sold a kidney for, and for a while he'd genuinely assumed Tom was gay.

Apparently not.

Tom liked his life organised and manageable, and women were, in his mind, simply not worth the trouble.

Tonight, though, was different. Tom asked after Jane, then cleared his throat and said something that made Richard blink.

"On your stag do. In this very pub. You told me you and Jane were going to give it five years before you had kids. I know you had a reason not to wait at all, but she got you to accept five. Your sixth anniversary was a month ago." Tom's eyes stayed on Richard's. "I don't know what's going on, whether you're trying or not, or whether plans changed, but you've been quiet recently. Missed a couple of nights you always make. I just wanted to check you're alright."

Richard had one of those out-of-body moments. He watched himself open and close his mouth like an idiot. Confused, yes, but more than that, touched.

"Sheesh, Tom. I don't even remember telling you that."

"I didn't think you would," Tom said, rubbing condensation off his glass. "Still. Thought I'd ask. Make sure."

Richard took a sip, buying time. Tom was his best friend, really, but work always kept them in the category of colleagues first, mates second. Maybe that needed changing.

"I don't know," Richard said quietly. "There's stuff. There's stuff with all marriages. But with kids..." He exhaled. "I brought it up a few months after our fifth anniversary. Nothing was going to happen unless I forced it. I sat her down and asked if she still wanted them. Told her we were past the five-year mark. She knew my reasons, so I didn't lay them out again."

Tom nodded once. "And?"

"It wasn't the response I wanted."

Tom snorted. "I bet."

"She started on about work. Building her client base." Richard shook his head. "I knew she had a full book, and we bring in more than we'll ever need, so I called her out. Properly. Backbone and everything."

Tom didn't smile.

"She said I didn't understand the pressure she was under," Richard went on. "Some of her colleagues still treat her like a nepobaby because of her dad. I told her that was rubbish. Yes, he handed her some clients, but at least half is all her. She's good at it. Seriously."

"Hmmm," Tom said, still watching him.

"Eventually I did the husband thing. Whatever that is. Told her we were past the point where we agreed to try and that I expected her to follow through."

Tom's eyebrows lifted slightly. Richard could still see Jane's face when he'd said it.

"She went properly quiet," Richard continued. "Properly upset. I said I couldn't believe she'd put work before our happiness. She said, 'your happiness,' and ran to the bathroom and locked herself in."

"That doesn't sound great," Tom said.

"No. No, it wasn't." Richard gave a short, bitter laugh. "I tried talking through the door. Asked if she'd changed her mind and didn't want kids and, if she had, why she'd never told me. No response. I couldn't hear tears."

Tom waited for him to continue.

"I went to bed. She came out at about three in the morning and sat on the edge of it. Said she was sorry. Said she did want kids. That she loved me. But she was scared. Scared of time going so fast." Richard stared into his pint. "Then she said she'd made an agreement with me and she'd honour it."

Tom grimaced. "Jesus."

"Yeah," Richard said. "I know I sound like a twat, but when the woman you love says it like that, it makes you feel like you've trapped her with a technicality."

"If you sound like a twat, it's because you always do," Tom said, and leaned back. "But I get it."

"And I do love her," Richard confirmed, "But I can't help feeling that we're always on the edge of descending into lies about it. Like there is some truth being withheld."

Tom hesitated. "Do you think she's lying?"

Richard didn't answer straight away.

"No," he said eventually. "If she was just lying to get away with something, I'd already be gone."

Tom frowned. "That's... oddly specific."