**Any typos found in this preview are mine and not the fault of my mega-awesome proofreader.
One
The Longest Time
Thomas
“Damn.”
Damn. It. All.
I stared at the terrified naked woman shivering at the opposite corner of my bed. Her eyes wildly darted around the room avoiding mine, tearing me apart.
My shame and lifelong confusion. Lifelong, there’s a laugh.
My fear. That was the problem. I couldn’t love Kick and hold on to my fear at the same time. I’d laid my cards down, making it too late to fold. Not that I would. Not on her.
Kick’s untamed morning curls mimicked the shock in her feral gaze when she braved a glance at me. How I wanted to comfort her but knew better. I let myself get caught up in the rage of a panicked female once—the mama bear who’d thought me a risk to her cubs. Kept the scars on my arm as a reminder to never do it again.
I’d planned to ease Kick into my unique reality. Instead, my secret escaped like a wild horse jumping a low fence.
Finally, she slowed her heaving breaths enough to speak. “This is a nightmare, right? I’m still dreaming?” Kick lifted her head. “Please wake me up.”
A tear threatened to slide down my cheek. My heart splintered as I looked at her beautiful body huddled into a protective ball. I cleared my throat. “Sorry, darlin’. Don’t know how you did it, but you figured out my secret before I could prepare you for it.” I chuckled–no, sneered–at my idiocy. “You warned me though. Didn’t you?”
Why couldn’t I just play it off? Let her think it was a damn dream? Because keeping the truth from Kick had been torture. I longed to share everything with her, even this. To be honest, in the hazy minute after she’d declared that I’d been a veteran of the Revolutionary War, my heart soared. Before I remembered that Kick wasn’t ready to hear the truth.
“Jesus fecking Christ!” She leapt from her perch on the bed and paced the floor, fingers dragging through her hair. “This can’t be happening. This doesn’t happen.” Kick let out a spine-chilling cackle. “Of course it happens to me. Why wouldn’t it? Is there no end to the weirdness in my life?”
I sighed and shifted her way. “I’m so, so sorry. It is the truth. My truth.”
“Stay away from me!” Kick’s plea came out as a squeak, but the fury and hysteria in her eyes registered as an all-out scream.
When I’d met Banger and he explained our lives as he understood them, the news came as a welcome relief. Of course, by then I had already passed my two-hundredth birthday. After endless decades of solitude, with only my uncle and grandson for comfort, I embraced every aspect of Banger’s life as a breath of fresh air and security. Like I’d been found.
Kick’s reaction was everything I feared, what every Felidae member feared.
“When were you born? The real date?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “June. Seventeen-fifty.”
“JaysusMaryandJoseph.” Kick fell into a reading chair and let her head drop into her hands.
I carried a quilt over to her and placed it around her shoulders. When the material touched her skin, she jumped, making me wince too. I cautiously eased into the other chair and picked up the portrait miniatures sitting on the table between the wingbacks handing her the first.
“This is me. My mother commissioned it before I went off to fight. I was supposed to be a career soldier, but my older brother enlisted too. Then he died.” I held out the other, angled it toward her and cleared my throat. “This is Alicia after our betrothal… ahh, engagement. Her mother gave it to me since I traveled a lot.”
Staring at the painting in her hand, Kick shook her head like it was full of cobwebs. “This is impossible.” Her hands trembled as she traced my features in my portrait. “Who are you?”
After sheltering my heart for centuries, it was suddenly in danger of shattering into a million bits. “I’m the man who loves you,” I said, hoping my words sank in. “I’ve been and done many things, but nothing has meant more than the possibility of loving you. We’re just beginning.” I cleared my throat to hide a sob. “Please don’t take it away.”
She placed the portrait back on the table and turned away from me.
Dammit.
“Were you ever going to tell me?” she asked, a harsh bite in her words.
“Yes.” I leaned toward her. “I promise. Once I knew for certain we were solid. You must see this isn’t something I just tell casual friends. These aren’t only my secrets you now possess. I had to be sure of us.”
“Hang on.” Kick sat up, her posture tight. “Are you saying I can’t walk away? That I’m trapped?”
“No, baby. I won’t force you to stay. Ever. It would tear me in two if you left, but knowing this won’t trap you with me. I trust you’ll keep these secrets.”
Kick jumped up, swiped her glasses from the nightstand, and stormed into the closet. When she returned, she wore my winter robe. She stood over me, skin flushed, breathing hard like she’d run a marathon.
“Why didn’t you trust me before? Hell, I told you things my kids don’t know! You were completely in my world and you…” Kick gestured toward the paintings. “…you held the biggest part of you back.” She jutted out a hip and glowered. “I know about being special, Thomas. About people not understanding, even resenting my reality. How could you trick me—”
“You were in danger!”
Kick jerked as if my bellow had knocked her back and she fell back into the chair. I continued more quietly, “I’m not the only one with this… curse… gift… affliction. My existence was lonely, confusing, and filled with constant fear until I found people like me. They call themselves the Felidae Society.”
“Liam used to be obsessed with zoology. Isn’t Felidae Latin for cats?” Kick scoffed.
“It’s said cats have nine lives—”
“Nine?” Her breath caught on the word. She dropped her head, curls flying in all directions as she shook it violently. “This isn’t funny. I’m often called dramatic for the odd way I live, but this is down-right mean. Cruel. You’re not like this. I can’t–”
I reached across the chasm between us and turned her chin toward me. “I am profoundly sorry that you found out this way. Wish I could have eased you into the truth. But I’m not sorry you know.”
Kick’s chin quivered. “You’re not joking?”
How I wished it was a prank. I closed my eyes and sighed. “No, darlin’.”
She blew out a long, wavering breath that I felt on my face and in my soul. “How old are your ‘cat people’?”
I paced the room now, unable to keep my panicked energy controlled. My life had been laid bare in a matter of minutes. I couldn’t stay still in a damn chair. I stormed into my closet and jammed my legs into a pair of sweatpants, finding a modicum of protection, like Kick had. This cliff dive of an introduction demanded full disclosure.
“Some are over a thousand years old, but it’s hard to pinpoint exact dates.”
Her jaw fell open.
I dropped to my knees in front of her chair and looked up into her perfect forest eyes, clouded with despair and fear. Desperate for her to understand, I said, “Until recently—a few decades, really—someone like a Felidae was eventually murdered. People fear what they can’t understand, so we hid in plain sight and moved often.”
“Okay.” Kick’s fingertips blanched as she grasped the arm rests. “How does knowing this put me in danger?”
I moved back onto my heels and tried to catch her gaze, silently begging her to see me, to believe me. “When I joined the Felidae, I’d already been with a woman for years.” Kick’s back stiffened, and I continued quickly. “We weren’t close like you and I. Don’t know how to explain it, but no one’s ever reached me the way you have. Anyway, Vivienne and I lived our lives apart, but also together. Back then, I settled for someone like an anchor, and she needed protection. When she had to flee Paris, I set her up with a boutique in New York.”
As if propelled by an invisible force, Kick padded out into the hallway to the gallery of old photographs. I followed, finding her in front of the picture of Viv’s grand opening. Kick had noticed it the morning after our first night together.
“Your ‘family friend’,” she said sarcastically, touching my image in the frame. “I thought this was your grandfather or something.”
I scoffed. “Or something. We were close, like I said.”
Kick kept staring at the photo. “Not a bic, then.”
I flinched at her words as they hit their target. “No.” I had never felt comfortable with Banger’s term for his disposable women. Now, I despised it, hating that I used to use it too.
She turned towards me and folded her arms. “But you do know how to be casual.”
I nodded and shrugged at the same time. “With anyone but you.”
“Thomas…” Kick exhaled a frustrated sigh. “…you still haven’t explained how this puts me in danger.”
“I’m trying to.” I heaved a breath. “The night before the gala, I found out that the Felidae had Vivienne under surveillance back then. The men watching her were supposed to kill her if they gathered evidence she knew about the Society.”
Kick stepped away from the wall. Away from me. She tilted her head as she scrutinized me. “You think they’ll kill me now that I know about them?”
“I did in December. It rattled me something fierce. That’s why I walked out that night. Hell, baby, here I’d been racking my brain, working with Banger to figure out who wanted to hurt you and your café. Then I find out you were in more danger from me?” I groaned as I shook my head.
“Okay. Then what’s changed?”
I stepped up to Kick and took her hands, smiling on the inside when she let me. “Two things changed. First off, Banger reassured me he would do everything in his power to protect us when I saw him in France. Tess was there too, and she declared herself on our side. So, you’ll have more than me fighting for us.” I brought our hands to my heart. “I promise to protect you with my body and anything else in my power. Do you believe me?”
Kick narrowed her gaze, studying me, making seconds seem like hours. Finally, in a quiet, rough voice she answered, “Shit… I think I do believe you.”
“Do you understand why I had to keep my secret now? I swear I—”
“No, I don’t.” She stepped away again and tracked a circle around me in the hallway. “Even though no one will ever hear about this from me, it feels like you tricked me. You-you drew me in. Made me love you. Why, Thomas? Why?”
“Because I’ve never loved anyone like I do you. Still, I had to be sure.”
“Sure of what?” She threw her arms up. “Do you think this is the first time my weltanschauung flipped on its head in a nanosecond? There have been days where it seemed like my whole life was a matter of learning that left is right and up is down. Aw hell, the genetics research…” Kick grabbed her head, and the robe fell open. She quickly re-tied it. “You’re studying yourself, aren’t you?”
“Sort-of. My two-times granddaughter is my main subject.”
“Your two…”
“Toni.”
“Her husband has Alzheimer’s?”
“That’s her.”
“Jaysus fecking Christ!” Kick tipped her head back, her lips moving like she was counting her breaths to calm herself. “It’s all half-truths, isn’t it? I thought you were her younger brother, Thomas. How is this—”
“My neighbors tried to kill me!” My bellow echoed through the house and practically blew us apart.
Her accusations had to stop. I ended up sitting on the floor across from the line of old photos, not sure how I got there. “I protect my family, Kick. When we met, you were beautiful… infuriating… intriguing. That said, you weren’t family.” I looked over at her and spread my hands apart. “You are my family now, and that’s why we’re here. I’ll protect you with everything I have, but I’ll be damned if Toni, or anyone else I love, will have to face what I did back then.”
“What do you mean, your neighbors tried to kill you?” She settled against the wall across from me.
The memories from that time had faded to the point they were almost gone emotionally. Or I thought they had. Everything flooded back as I spoke. “Ridiculous rumors floated around the village. Some called me a wizard. Others accused me of making a pact with the devil because I didn’t appear to age. What hurt the most was… my sons. They grew impatient with me. Their peers inherited lands from their dead fathers, while I showed no signs of slowing down. One night, a group of men made their way to my plantation to put an end to me.”
“I thought your family bred horses.”
“Kick…” I clipped, too emotional to handle the change in focus. “We did and still do. It was also the eighteen hundreds in Virginia.”
She wrapped a hand around her hair and brought it over her shoulder. “Well, shit.”
“Yeah.” I scrubbed my scruffy face with my hands. “So I visited my daughters, ending up at Alice’s—my youngest—in Kentucky. Joe is her son, George Jr.”
“Joe is George?”
Equal parts exhausted and frustrated, I clipped my words. “Rotating names is part of how we survive… as is the fierce protection of our privacy.”
“Jaysus.” Kick stood and approached the gallery wall again. She stopped in front of each photo, often touching my image in it. “So, it skips a generation? This… thing you have?”
“Depends. Some families skip several generations. Some don’t.” I wrapped my arms around my knees and let my head settle on them, thoroughly worn out. “Are you all right?” With each step came a hitch of her breath, so I aurally followed her path to every photo without having to watch her.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s me and my Uncle Theo when we founded a bank in San Francisco. For the longest time, it was just us. There were rumors about his grandfather, but nothing for certain. Disappearing was easier back then.”
Step. A low keening sound floated around the hall.
“Uncle Theo, me, and Joe just before boarding the train to join World War I.” I scoffed at the thought of those years. “We bought into the idea of ending all wars.”
A shuffle. Another hitching breath.
“Joe and me, Paris in the twenties,” I murmured. “He had switched back to George, then, and I was going by Michael.”
“Mic—” Two swishes of the robe and a gasp.
“Banger and me in the fifties. In Australia.” I lifted my eyes when I didn’t hear any more movement.
Kick tilted her head from side to side as she studied the photos. “I haven’t kept up my retouching skills, but back in the day, I could’ve done a decent job with these.” She reached back to the nearest black and white picture. “Maybe not the colored ones, but I used to switch heads on images like this. Kids today can do this with color photos. It’s a basic skill now.”
What I would give for them to be faked. I pinched the bridge of my nose, feeling the start of a headache. Or was it heartache. I couldn’t shake the ominous feeling I was about to watch her walk out the door.
Over before we’d begun.
Despair rushed through me as I cleared my throat. “They’re not Photoshopped. They’re not my ancestors. They’re me. My life. Hung there to keep me from losing… myself.”
Kick moved to the top of the stairwell. She stood stock-still, buzzing with energy. I braced for her to run. Instead, she placed one hand on the banister and the other on the railing defining the balcony to the guest wing. Then Kick burst out a full-on scream at the top of her lungs. “Fuuuck!”
When she ran out of breath, she sank down on the steps and sat in total stillness, staring at nothing.
Again, seconds turned into hours. I wanted to turn back the clock to the night before, when she rode my cock and we just had beauty and freedom between us. I hung my head in shame, convinced she’d abandon the promises we’d made to each other yesterday. At the same time, I felt an inexplicable relief from bringing her fully into my world. The struggle to maintain my sanity through the loneliness hit me full-force, knowing that I was about to lose it.
“Do you want to leave me now?” That waiting tear let loose and dropped onto my knee, sinking into my sweatpants material.
Despite a rasp, Kick’s voice sounded angelic to my ears.
“No Thomas. Heaven help me, but I don’t.” Her breath hitched again, and I lifted my head when I realized she was crying too. “I don’t know why, but I can’t walk away.” Kick stared into my eyes, searching. I hoped like hell she still saw me there. “I’m scared.”
Each shuddering breath I took felt like a fight for life. “You may not believe this, but I’m more frightened than you.”
Kick spun to face me. She was bright red from screaming. “Are you su-sure you’re not a vampire?” she asked through another hitch.
I laughed once, needing the joke, even though it had been a sincere question. “You and your damn fantasy books.”
“Paranormal.”
“Fine.” I flicked a wrist. “Promise… I’m a human man. Just have variances in my DNA.”
“What variances?”
“That’s what my research is about.” Another damn tear slid down my cheek.
Kick covered her mouth. She scooted across the floor and pulled me into a tight embrace.
I lifted her hand and brought her flat palm to my heart, holding it there. “This had been locked up tight for centuries. Do you have any idea what that feels like? I’d grown so used to the cold and loneliness… thought it would always be this way. Damned if you didn’t have the key. This…” I tapped her hand over my heart. “…is what you need to know about me. You’re my locksmith.”
I fingered the strung-out curls hanging in her face and tucked them behind her ear. “No matter what happens after today, I’ll watch over you—even if it must be from afar. Your safety is more important than mine.”
Kick sat back on her heels, let her hands fall into her lap, and stared at me.
Please make the vulnerability worth it. Please don’t make me regret my honesty.
She sighed a ragged breath, her beautiful hazel eyes darkened with sorrow. “It would be easy to make you love me from a distance. Life would be much easier. But who says love is easy? If this is what makes you the man I love, then I must accept it, right? You accept my health issues. What’s an impossible birthday added to the mix?”
“Come here.” I grabbed Kick’s wrist with one hand and opened her robe with the other, so I could hold her skin-to-skin. It had been an exhausting morning, and it wasn’t even eight o’clock. The way a life could turn on a dime, but Kick had plenty of experience with such things, didn’t she? This was what people meant when they said home wasn’t a piece of land. It was a woman who could lighten the load and give life meaning with her smile.
Kick shifted to straddle my lap and settled into me, occasionally kissing my jaw. I felt a warm, low hum stir in my limbs—the telltale sign of my aura appearing after a highly emotional experience.
Kick murmured, “Why, though?”
I kissed her temple and held my lips there, breathing in the scent of her hair. While tracing light kisses down to her cheek and across to her mouth, something incredible happened as she responded. A literal warmth emanated from us, starting with our hands. I laced our fingers. “Wish I knew. Have to figure out what first.” She shifted, and I closed my eyes, taking in the feel of her embrace. Hope warred with my hard-earned cynicism.
“I’ll grow old and decrepit while you stay young and perfect.”
“Don’t think you’ll have to worry about that.”
“Why not?” Kick sounded tired, like the morning had worn her out as much as it had me.
I nudged her, making her sit back. “The second reason I decided it was safe to ask you to come back to me in December…”
“Oh, right.” She pushed her hair off her face. “What’s that?”
I raised a hand, letting the blue aura I thought I’d lost float above my skin. I flexed my fingers as waves of light rippled around them.
Kick gasped and brought her hands to her face. “You do it too?”
“It disappeared a long time ago. Until you.”
With a kind of awe, she whispered, “It started recently for me. I thought it had to do with meditation.”
“I know.” I grinned and lifted Kick’s hand.
The same light washed over and around her, only it was a light-violet color. Her eyes flashed wide.
Then she fainted.