Love Of A Lifetime

by Murphy, Riley

  His somber expression, when he turned back, made her shiver. She wanted him to say more, but he didn’t and she didn’t have the courage to ask, so they stared at one another until he whispered, “We have—”

  Right then the bedroom door burst open and Finley jumped. Not as fast as Jack as he got out of the way. The next thing she knew a yellow and tan blur shot across the room. Then a good four feet from the bed it went airborne, sailing right over her and landing so hard beside her, that she bounced a foot off the mattress before she came back down in a half sprawl. She blinked, huffed the hair out of her eyes and found Jack.

  He didn’t miss a beat. Inclining his head, he pointed to a spot behind her and said, “We have a cat.”

  She was afraid to look. The bed was sagging so bad she was actually clutching the side of the mattress so she didn’t slide back. Slowly she pushed herself up and twisted just her head around until she found herself looking into the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. Bluer than hers even. Of course the dark tan fur framing the oval orbs made them pop and the triangle shaped pupils didn’t hurt to make them more spectacular either. But when the humongous beast pushed its forehead into her back and rubbed, purring like a small engine plane, she remembered.

  “Taren!” She let go of mattress and half slid, half turned when she threw her arms around him. “It’s you. You’re here.”

  The cat licked her arm and even though it felt like he took off a whole line of her hair with the action, she laughed and hugged him tighter. All kinds of memories flooded her consciousness then and not all were awesome as Jack and her beast never saw eye-to-eye.

  “Hey,” she pushed him down so he was on his back and she could pet his chest. His coloring was like a liger and his size slightly bigger that an Irish wolf hound. “Since when is he allowed up on the furniture? Oh no, did he…?” When the thought came to her she gulped. “Did he die? Is that way he’s here?” Her hand stilled as she watched Taren knead thin air as if he were a mime feeling plate glass.

  “No. I brought him here, no easy feat by the way, as I thought he’d help me track you. I lost you last lifetime and had to find you all over again.” Jack scowled and shook his head. “But he wasn’t much help. Well, until the cave, then…”

  “Yes?”

  Jack crossed his arms over his chest and nodded. “Let’s just say he’s finally earned the right to the privilege he’s hijacked each and every night since I brought him here.”

  No way. “He slept in this bed with you?”

  “I had no choice.”

  Of course he did, but she wasn’t going to argue. She had her baby. “Who’s Mommy’s good boy.” She scratched under his chin and remembered too late when he purred he drooled. Big time. She bent to check and that’s when she caught a whiff of his breath. “Oh. Ew. Have you been feeding him fish?”

  “King salmon flown in from Alaska.”

  That got her attention. “What? Why?”

  Jack looked totally confused and a little unsettled. Which on a guy like him wasn’t a very good look. “It’s all he’d eat.”

  Her jaw dropped and then she snapped it closed and looked down at her sneaky beast. “Taren.” She spoke in their native language to him and when one blue eye opened to look up at her, she scowled. “How could you?”

  Both eyes were open now, but he didn’t look a bit sorry. “I hope you had your fill of salmon because that gravy train is going to stop right now.” He rubbed his jaw against her shoulder and she shook her head. “Don’t say sorry to me. You know who you owe an apology to. Get to it.” When he didn’t move she narrowed her eyes at him.

  Jack’s arms fell out of their cross and all he could do was stare at his mate. “Unbelievable.” He waited a few seconds and then looked down. The huge cat sat beside him and rubbed its big head against his hip. “He understands that well?”

  “Of course he does.”

  When Jack thought of all the cajoling. All the worrying he’d done thinking he’d brought her pet to earth and the beast wouldn’t eat—he frowned—but now that he thought about it, in all those finicky weeks the cat never lost any weight. He must have been finding his food source somewhere else until Jack found the one he wanted. Which just happened to be the most expensive fish money could buy. The sneaky, little bastard.

  “Jack.”

  Jack stopped mid-bend and growled. “I wasn’t going to hurt him…too much.” When he looked up he expected a lecture as his mate was good at giving him one when it came to him and his ideas about dishing out punishment, but she wasn’t paying either Taren or him any mind. She was staring at the fire. Distracted, and if he didn’t miss his guess, worried. This time when he leaned down he kept his hands at his sides, and spoke so softly Finley wouldn’t hear, “You dodged a bullet, buddy. Now, go lie down and behave before we wind up upsetting our lady.”

  He didn’t really think Taren would obey. After all, he’d been practically begging the beast over the last few months in all fourteen of the languages he knew how to speak, to get the cat to do the simplest tasks. He narrowed his eyes and had to fight the urge to jump the walking-away-with-arrogant-swagger beast when he recalled how it had only been his favorite shoes, his favorite chair and only his hairbrush that had been annihilated by Sneaky’s claws and teeth. He knew these hadn’t been random happenings and now that his mate was here there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

  “He isn’t it.”

  “Who?” Jacked walked to the door and closed it. Spinning around he asked, “Who isn’t it?”

  “Taren. He’s not what I’m supposed to remember.” She gathered the sheet around her and got up her knees. “Tell me.” She bounced impatiently. “It’s like a word on the tip of your tongue that you just can’t speak. I’m going crazy.”

  He took two steps and then stopped. Maybe he should tell her. Maybe…

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jack shook his head. “I’d prefer that you remember certain things on your own.” Finley scowled before he added, “Look, there’s nothing about this lifetime that’s the same as our previous ones. I’m not sure how to handle things. So far, I haven’t done a very good job.”

  That took the stuffing out of her. She plopped down and shifted to sit back against the headboard. “Okay, how bad is this thing you prefer I remember on my own?”

  “Bad?” He walked to the bed. “It’s not bad. There’s nothing bad.” She gave him a withering look and he had the decency to grimace. “Okay, some things weren’t so great. Especially in our last lifetime,” he agreed with her unspoken ‘oh, really?’ “I just don’t want to make things worse, is all. I want you to recall things on your own. The last time I tried helping you along, I made a mess of things. And as I said, so far this time I’m not doing much better. You almost died, for fuck’s sake.”

  Strangely, his words gave her comfort. The knot in her stomach eased into a dull gnawing ache. He was right. She needed to relax and allow her memories to evolve naturally. “I don’t know why you’d say that. You haven’t done anything wrong. It was me who chose to go with Jesse and screw things up.”

  “It wasn’t you, babe. It was me. I had a hard time tracking you this time and now I know why.”

  “Cyrus.”

  “Yeah, I figure he couldn’t have known who you were prior to tonight though, otherwise he wouldn’t have been foolish enough to try to kill you. He and Ceil must have thought you were simply a mortal mate. Thank God he didn’t find the truth out sooner.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If Cyrus knew the truth before now he could have made it impossible for me to ever find you. He would’ve had the advantage of me not knowing that he was here. You’ve seen what’s he capable of, but now that I know he’s around and that he has the Book of Maps—”

  “That must have been what Jesse handed to him in the clearing. What are the maps of?”

  “Entrance and exit points between our world and earth.”

  She gulped. He looked worried. Rea
lly worried. “This is bad for all Vampines, isn’t it?” He nodded and she asked, “How many Vampines live here permanently, like you? And out of all those, how many of them were successful in finding their eternal mates?”

  “You really are a reporter. There are a little over a hundred Vampines scattered across the globe.” He looked away as he softly admitted, “As to the fortunate ones who found their eternal mates? Three.”

  “Three?” Those weren’t very good odds. No wonder Cyrus had assumed she was a mortal mate with no connection to Emon. Jack paced by the side of the bed. She let him make a couple of passes before she asked, “Why is my life protected? How?”

  He stopped and looked down at her. “Your life is protected from him. Only him. After what he did to the women of our world, he was banned from doing harm to any Vampine soul and even though your soul is connected to this world, it’s bonded with mine. So he couldn’t kill you, no matter how much he may have wanted to.”

  Her gaze dropped to Jack’s chest. She shivered, recalling the gleam in Cyrus’s lifeless eyes as he squeezed her neck tight. Yes, he’d very much wanted to kill her. Her eyes widened and she looked up. “Is that why he stuck me in that tree? He wanted me to freeze to death up there in the hope you wouldn’t find me in time?” Jack nodded. His jaw clenching and unclenching told her he was furious. “Well, it was a good thing you found me.”

  “Do you remember the avalanche?”

  She shook her head. She really didn’t remember much after Cyrus walked down the tree.

  “I’m sure he was behind that too.”

  “What does he want? Surely after all this time he’s given up on me.”

  “I don’t think he has.” He started pacing again.

  “You can’t be serious.” She thought about her unremarkable life. A young woman with no relationship prospects. A woman who, until a day ago, remained loyal to the man of her dreams. The ghost in her bed and now?

  “I want to go home with you.” He stopped dead in his tracks and eyed her. “I mean it. My whole life, well, this whole lifetime, I felt like I was missing an integral part of myself. And now that I’ve found you.” She paused, feeling slightly uncomfortable. She couldn’t really say that she felt completely whole because she didn’t.

  “Yes?” he softly encouraged.

  When he came to her, she sighed. “I feel almost whole. Maybe if you told me something about our history together, personal things. It might help me remember. You know, stuff about us? Then possibly, I’ll be able to recall the ‘something’ that’s important. I feel like it’s waiting for me there, in my mind, but I just can’t touch it yet. Maybe it’s the answer to why I took my life so long ago.”

  His brows furrowed in momentary confusion. There was a flash of what? Sadness or resignation, she couldn’t be sure, that crossed his face as he walked to the bottom of the bed. One foot came up to rest upon the platform, while he leaned forward, bending his knee to rest his arm across. He was back to the old Jack. The sexy and disarming one. Darn.

  “Okay, that sounds like a good idea. So, what are you looking for, blue eyes? A detailed accounting of all our times together, or just that last lifetime?”

  “I don’t know.” She brought her knees up and adjusted the sheets over her legs. “The memories come on their own. I just thought getting to know about us better might help. Like what do we like to do together? What kind of food do we enjoy?” She shrugged. “Those kind of things.” She fidgeted with the edge of the sheet. She couldn’t help it. His undivided attention was a powerful thing.

  “You already know what our favorite thing to do together is.” He gave her a wicked smile and popped his brows. “And as to the other? It’s pancakes.” He announced this so matter-of-factly that she blinked.

  Sex and food? That’s what he was offering in way of eternal companionship? She snorted. “I suppose the pancakes come after a good romp in the morning?”

  He tossed his head to one side to throw his hair back from his eyes and grinned. “Actually, the best ones are the blueberry ones you make me in the middle of the night. After one of our more, ah, heated sessions.”

  He looked so handsome telling her this, that she couldn’t find it in her heart to get mad at him. “Ohh-kay, aside from food and sex, what do we like to do together?”

  She expected him to have to think about this for a minute and was surprised to hear his immediate answer, “Puzzles.”

  “Like crossword puzzles?” she questioned in amazement. They were one of her favorite things to do, especially on Sundays.

  “Sure, Arthur Wynne published the first one in 1913 so, we’ve had two lifetimes to enjoy them. But other than that, before that I mean, your clever mind always wanted to be challenged by all kinds of puzzles.”

  She liked the sound of that. “Really?” She sat forward coming to sit Indian style, eager to hear all about it.

  “Yep,” he answered. He looked directly at her. “One game in particular, we both enjoyed. It was, oh,” he broke eye contact, looking up at the ceiling in thought, “maybe, in the mid 1700’s. A good century for wine, as I recall.” She made a face, but he didn’t see it. “I went to the Orient to purchase some spices and view new handling techniques I figured would be good for one of our holding companies. You couldn’t come along on that trip, so I brought you home a present.”

  “A puzzle,” Finley supplied. She knew the Chinese were masters at things like this, especially early on in history.

  “A puzzle,” he affirmed. He looked to be remembering as he gazed across and down at her. Wait, were his eyes darkening and his pupils dilating? “Yes. The night I got home, I thought the two of us were going to die. You see, it was leather—”

  “The puzzle?” she anxiously nodded, hoping he’d cut to the chase.

  “Yes. And it had so many locks and catches—”

  “Catches,” she repeated, still nodding. Surely he’d get to the point any minute.

  “Um hum, and by the time I got it on you, I was afraid I’d never get it off.”

  Instead of her head going up and down in a nod, as it had been doing, it took a hard right. Her chin jutted out, in a ‘come again’ kind of a fashion. “Wait, I was wearing the puzzle?”

  “Oh yeah,” he said, as he seemed to forget that she was even in the room. “There were black leather straps crisscrossing all over the place. Across your ass, which was really tempting. Mmm, and in between your legs, there was this little lock that kept rubbing up against your...” he paused, as if he were trying to find the right word, “I’ll just call it my favorite part of you, that made you jump and moan as the cold metal connected against the most delicate part of you.” He sighed, licking his lips. “Then there were those fucking awesome breasts of yours, which somehow looked more naked, hoisted and strapped in the leather, than if they were on their own for view.” He breathed deeply through his nose and pushed his elbow off his bent leg to stand. “I was so hot for you that night. I can remember it as if it were yesterday. I literally drooled all over you. I couldn’t figure out the damned locks and there you were, the one who was supposed to be the vanquished, showing me how it was done.”

  She was still stuck back a few sentences before, so she had a hard time catching up. When she did, she gulped, “I, ah, let you strap me into…?”

  “Oh yeah,” he assured with a vigorous nod. “But, you see,” he came around the side of the bed and sat down. “The leather puzzle had a collar that went from here,” he brought his hand to her throat indicating a level with the bottom of her earlobe, “to here,” his finger traveled down about three inches. “In my haste to bind you, I’d forgotten one important thing.” She was enthralled, listening to him, and couldn’t look away. “Your neck, gorgeous. I had no access to the one spot that I wanted to visit most of all since I had been gone. And you? You were the one who had to undo all those tricky locks because once I had them on you, I had no patience to get them off. I was looking for a knife while you systematically started to undo the
m. I couldn’t have loved and hated you more than I did in that moment. You showed me up with your cleverness, but then you assuaged my wounded pride by getting out of the leather. And when the leather was off and I had access to all of you? It was a great kind of terrible for us. You were so generous that night, and I was so starved for a taste of you.” He looked distracted, like he was seeing the image of them that night, all over again.

  She reached up, and was just about to trace a finger over the sexy stubble on chin, when she heard him whisper in awe, “I nearly killed you that night.” Instead of to his chin, her trembling hand went to her mouth.

  He blinked, looked down at her, and came back to reality. He must have spied how horrified she was because he quickly offered, “But I didn’t, and the experience only made us that much closer.”

  Finley wasn’t buying that. She didn’t have the chance to question him on it though, because he reached over and brushed her hand aside to kiss her. Just a kiss. Plain and simple and mind numbing. Then he pulled her in his arms, crushing her against him as he swore, “I would never hurt you, blue eyes. Surely you know.”

  “What do I know?” she whispered and laid her head against him as she listened to the steady beat of his heart.

  “You’re the love of my lifetime and that’s a very, very long time.”

  Those words seeped into her heart. She felt safe and content just to be here, in the warmth of his embrace. After a moment she grumbled, “Hey, why did Quinn have to die?”

  “I thought you liked the name Jack better?” His question sounded like low rumbling thunder against her ear.

  “I do, I’m curious though”

  “Let’s just say that I wasn’t the easiest person to be around after I lost you too early, babe. I went after people and things. I was quite ruthless for a couple of decades, so I thought it best to reinvent myself. Don’t you find me more laid back, now?”

  She leaned away, searching his face. Attempting to gauge whether he was kidding or not. He had to be kidding, right? “More laid back? You are joking?”