Loman by Kathi S. Barton

Chapter 3

Loman was going to take pictures of the lion when he arrived on their land. Having all his equipment with him, he was excited to do this for the big lion but mostly for his family. Not that anyone but his family would see the pictures, but he wanted them to be around so they could tell their children’s-children about what they did for an animal of their kind. He thought he was more excited about that than just about any other picture he’d taken to date.

“Hey.” He looked up at his brother Quin as he made his way to him. The plane had landed an hour ago at the airport, and they were waiting on Parker, with the help of Don, to bring the cage with King in it to them. Apparently, he’d been a good traveler and hadn’t gotten upset once on the ride here. “I’ve been trying to contact you for the last couple of days. I keep getting sidetracked, what with all the things going on at the hospital and at home. You’re about as healthy as I’ve seen you. How would you feel about being able to shift?”

It was almost as if his brother had commanded him to shift. His cat took him at that moment like he’d been on a mark in a sprinters race, just waiting for the gun to sound so he could take off. Loman had only a moment to appreciate being painless. A split second to feel like a new man and lion.

As Loman continued to run, letting his lion have his head, he saw King coming at him as if they were going to be side by side. Slowing just enough to let the lion catch up with him, King took the lead, and they ran straight to the trees. His lion seemed just as excited as he was to get to run with the older lion.

Jumping over fallen trees was his favorite thing to do. King, just slightly ahead of him, would leap through the air and take the ground on one paw. Almost as if he’d been doing it for years rather than his first time in the wild, so to speak. He bounced off of trees to make sharp turns. Leaves scattered in the air as he ran through them. Small animals scrambled to get cover as they ran over their hiding places. Loman was enjoying watching the playtime in front of him so much that he nearly fell twice instead of paying attention.

Loman didn’t have any idea how long they ran. He only knew that he was having the time of his life. And that he’d never take for granted his ability to shift and run like this again. Also, he was going to make sure that his other half had more time out in the open.

Speaking to his family off and on a few times was great, but he ran with King wherever he wanted to go. Twice the cat had to stop to rest. He winded quickly. Loman didn’t know if it was his age, being nearly twenty-six years old, or he simply wasn’t used to running so much that slowed him down a few times. Loman himself wasn’t used to running either, as a matter of fact. He’d been laid up himself for the last month. But King was magnificent in his recovery.

The river that ran the length of the ranch was something that King seemed to enjoy more than exploring caves. They both swam in the water and rested on the shorelines before getting back in the water or taking off again. When it began to get dark, he led the cat to the caves again to show him where there was shelter for him.

“I’m afraid that he won’t stay there.” He asked Billy who had spoken to him why not. “He’s enjoying his freedom in any way that he can. King wants to be out in the open, with the stars shining down on him. He told me he wants to wake in the morning with dew or snow on his coat because he can. I think that sometime soon, he’s going to try and chase down his dinner. That’s only a few of the things that he wanted by coming here. Uncle Loman, he told methat he had the best time with you today. That he couldn’t have had a better time without you there with him. King said that he thanks you for taking time out of your day to be with him.”

“Tell him that it was my pleasure. That I think I enjoyed it much more than he did. It was something that I will likely never be able to do again. Run with a wild animal such as himself.” He moved out of the cave and watched King as he found himself a place to lie down in the open area. “He’s been beaten up quite a bit, hasn’t he? Like someone had used a whip against him. But he’s never let it get him down today. I almost feel sorry for him but for him being here. Never once did he try to harm me or any of the other animals that are around here.”

“He promised that he wouldn’t. As for being beat up, I don’t know. I know that he’s been depressed for a long time before he was able to contact me, I was told. I love what I can do for animals, but I find it to be so incredibly sad as well.” He told her what she did was good for all kinds of reasons. “I know that. I’ve been able to save a lot of heartache for the animals here on the ranch. And I feel like I’ve been able to save a few lives, too, while I was at it.”

“Yes, you have. And you’ve been able to bring families together too.” She laughed with him. “I’m headed home. I think King is in for the night. I don’t know that I could do this every day, but if you find out he wants a partner to run with, let me know. I did really enjoy myself today. As I’m sure, any of the others would as well if I’m busy.” She told him that she would pass that along to him.

As he made his way home as his other self, Loman couldn’t believe how much better he felt. He wasn’t sore anymore, for sure, but his body felt fit, and his mind was clearer than it had been in some time, he thought. He found himself wanting to get back to work too. Even his lion seemed to be better. While he still had to figure out who had poisoned him, he was content to pretend like he’d only had a horrible case of the flu or something and go on.

Lindsley was waiting for him when he got in the house. She had sandwiches and drinks for him, and he sat with her at the kitchen table as she told him about her day. He hadn’t realized it was so late until the big grandfather clock in the hall chimed that it was two in the morning.

“I’m sorry you stayed up so late.” She told him it was fine, as she wanted to talk to him anyway. “I’m so glad that you did. I’ve missed you today. But it’s been a good day for me. I hope I didn’t ruin any plans you might have had for us. When Quin told me that I could shift, I didn’t think of anything else but getting out there and letting my lion go. And getting to run with an actual lion? Well, I don’t know that many shifters can say that about themselves. He ran like he’d been out in the savannah for years.”

“I got some pictures. Just with my phone. The two of you racing to the tree line was more than I could have hoped for in a photo of you two.” He looked over the pictures she had taken and told her how great they were. And they really were too. “Not as good as yours are, but I’m pleased with them.”

“I’ll print them. I wanted to get some too, but, well, you see how that went.” She told him that he’d been beautiful. “Thank you, love. But to have to admit that I thought that King looked great too. He really did enjoy himself. And when I left him, Billy contacted me, telling me that he didn’t want to miss a moment of being outdoors. That tomorrow he was going to find his dinner and run it down. I wouldn’t do that, but I can understand him wanting to. It would be one more thing that he could count as being free.”

Loman had been sleeping in one of the spare rooms since he’d been able to get around on his own. Once they were at the top of the stairs, he kissed her quickly and headed toward his room. Once he was in there, he decided he smelled bad and decided to take a shower.

Even the hot water flowing over his body seemed to make an impact on his body. Loman had been down for too long with this thing that had happened to him. Being poisoned with iron, quite a bit of it, he’d been told, had really done a number on his body. He’d forgotten how to be human, it felt like to him. Scrubbing his body as he thought about his next job, he nearly screamed like a little girl when the door slid open, and Lindsley stepped into the shower with him.

“Can I scrub your back for you?” Nodding, he turned when she asked him to. His mind was sort of frozen up with his body in that moment. “I bought some really nice sponges when I was in Columbus the other day. I don’t care for the loofa ones. They’re too hard on my skin. I think I have really soft and silky skin. What do you think?”

He touched his fingers to the arm she offered him. It was silky. When the hair on her arm danced under his fingers, Loman looked at Lindsley. Christ, he thought, he was going to be in big trouble if she wasn’t hitting on him right now.

Her face was beautiful, like a soft cloud. Loman loved the way her face was put together. It sounded stupid, he knew, but as a photographer, he looked for things like that when he saw something he liked.

With her face damp from the heat of the water, the dewy particles enhanced the freckles over her nose. The tiny hairs on her cheeks captured more water droplets and ran down her cheeks like a waterfall on a warm deserted island. He loved the color of her eyes, the way they would darken when she was angry or frustrated. Even now, they were darker than he’d ever seen them. He would be able to add lust to that list. Her lips, full and pink, seemed to beg for someone to kiss them.

Touching his fingers to her mouth, he was amazed at their warmth. Leaning down to her slowly, he kissed not just her mouth but her cheeks and nose as well. When she wrapped her arms around him, he picked her up and pressed her against the wall of the shower.

“This isn’t how I envisioned us making love the first time.” She laughed and told him that making love anywhere was all she’d been thinking about. “Then tell me, love, what took you so long to come to me?”

“I needed you to be healthy so that when you come the first time, you wouldn’t be taking a nap because I wore you out. Or I broke you somehow.” He laughed. Kissing her again, he lifted his head when she leaned her head away from him. “Loman, if you don’t take me right now, I’m going to have to do something about it on my own. It’s all I can think about is having you inside of me.”

Turning off the shower, he took her to the bedroom. Lying her on the bed, still wet, he stood over her and looked at the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. When she reached for him, Loman couldn’t have asked for a better way to make love to the woman he’d come to love. Joining her on the bed, he spread her legs wide to see her in all her glory.

“Make love to me, Loman. I want to be yours in all ways.” He wanted this to last, but he was having trouble concentrating on anything but having her. When she touched her fingers to her breasts, making her nipples harden, he watched as she slid her hands down her body to her oozing pussy. “I’m going to come.”

It was glorious to watch her come. Her body tightened up, and her screams echoed in his heart as she called out his name. Even as she came a second time, Loman moved so that he could capture all her juices, lapping up all that she offered him.

Sliding his fingers into her sheath, he made love to her with his mouth and fingers. She came so many times that he lost track. Taking her fingers to his mouth, he licked them clean as he moved over her body. Sliding into her, she screamed again, tightening around his cock so wonderfully that he wanted to stay there forever.

Making love to her was something that he’d been thinking about since he first met her. It was nothing compared to the real thing. She was wonderfully responsive. Her body was in tune with his own. As he pulled her closer to him, pressing her body harder into the bed, he knew that so long as he lived, he’d never feel the way he did at this moment about another living creature. He was in love with his mate.

“Come with me, Loman. Now.” He fucked her harder, bringing them both to their climax at the same time. When she begged him for more, he could not have turned her down, even with a gun to his head.

Loman emptied himself in his mate twice before realizing that he felt fulfilled. When she dug her nails into his back, holding onto him as she screamed out another release, Loman cried out himself as he came again and again before his body simply shut down.

When he woke up, Loman reached for Lindsley. When she wrapped her body around his, he held her tightly and thought of all the things that he was going to do now that he had a mate. First and foremost, he needed to figure out a way to work less so that he could spend more time at home with her.

“I don’t think so.” He looked at Lindsley when she spoke. “You talk in your sleep. Or awake, I’m not sure. But you’re not quitting your job to stay home with me. I’d never get anything done, and you know it.”

“You’re saying that you’d chase me around the house all the time?” She just glared at him. “All right. I guess I can see where having me at home, getting under your feet as my mom used to say about my dad, would be a distraction.”

“Distraction? You’d drive me crazy. You’re a person that needs to be taking pictures. Your mom told me about your first job. I can’t imagine you at eight, much less taking pictures.” He told her that it had come easy for him. “That right there is what I’m talking about. You not being able to get out and take pictures. And do not mention to me that you could take pictures of kids in a studio. That would make you insane, and you know it. No. You need the wild and outdoors more than anyone I’ve ever met.”

When she got up to take a shower, he wasn’t sure if she was mad at him or not. The more he thought of it, the more he wondered if he should be upset. Getting up, he took a shower too, making love to her again, he decided that neither of them was mad, but he’d better be finding himself a new job to do, or he’d be in dutch with the missus, as his dad used to say.

Loman decided to start writing those old sayings down. He’d feel closer to his father if he did that. He also knew the perfect person to help him. Grandda would get a kick out of it because he was sure that his dad got them from his dad.

~*~

Lindsley was cleaning out the desk that had been in storage since her father had taken over the gallery some years ago when her mom joined her. She’d had a meeting this morning and was still dressed in her suit. Lindsley asked her how it had gone.

“Well, I think. I’m glad that we never had a board here. My goodness, they’re very tight-fisted with their money. Carmilla was there as well. When she invited me to be a part of the hospital board, I didn’t have any idea that she was the president of it.” Lindsley asked her why that would make a difference. “None, I suppose. I was—what are you doing there?”

“This desk was once grandpa’s, and I wanted to use it in my office. But the drawers are stuck or locked. I can’t get them open.” Mom came to the other side of the desk where she was. “The top one will open, but the others won’t. And I’ve searched everywhere for a key, but there doesn’t seem to be one.”

“Look under the desk.” She said she couldn’t lift the sucker. “Yes, I think that might have been my dad’s plan. He used to hide things like credit card applications when they came in under the desk so that he could burn them in the fire later. It wasn’t until he was able to get a shredder that he stopped doing that. I have an idea. Ask the men here to help you. Aren’t you having some work done here with some of the Foster men? Perhaps they can lift it up for you.”

After calling for a couple of them to come and help, Cass and Quin teased her when they found her on the floor with all sorts of kitchen tools in front of her. Quin asked her what she thought a pair of tongs was going to do to get the desk open.

“For your information, I was using the tongs to pull out paper. If I ever found any. Grandda was good at keeping things forever. And I wasn’t positive that I wanted to touch something that might have been in here for decades. I just wanted to take this to my office and use it.” Quin said that it was a great idea. “Thank you. Now, if you guys could just lift it up enough so I can look under it, I’d be happy.”

The key was there. Stapled to the bottom of the desk in a way that she had to have the desk tipped over so that she could work to get it off. Just as soon as she had the key in her hand, they lifted the desk back up and set it on its bottom. However, it was Cass who noticed that some papers had been dislodged and asked her if she wanted to look at them.

“They appear to have come from a panel on the bottom.” She agreed with her mom and picked up the papers that had been unearthed. While she was at that, Cass unlocked the drawers for her. “What are they, honey?”

“I’m not sure what I’m looking at. They look like deeds to something. But it’s worn where the state is. I don’t think it’s here. But it looks like grandda only paid about fifty-three cents an acre for whatever this is.” Handing it to Cass when he asked, she pulled the rest of the papers to her that he’d been able to pull from the locked drawers. “Here are more deeds, mom. Did you know that grandda was buying up property?”

“It would have been before her time. Look at the dates of purchase.” She could see that now. Whatever he bought, it was about ten years before he’d even met her grandmother. “I can have someone look into these for you. There would be records. And since it has the number of the book as well as the line number, it would only take someone a couple of minutes to pull the right deed book to look it up.”

“Do you think that he still owns it?” Cass told her that it was hard to tell after so many years. “All right. You do that, and I’ll see what else I can—” Lindsley looked at her mom. “This is a bank key, mom. Remember Grandda telling us that he’d lost one? I think…Andi might remember if he told us which bank it was from.”

When Parker just popped into the room, it nearly scared ten years off her life. Asking for the key, she handed it back almost immediately. The look on her face wasn’t quite a smile, but it wasn’t evil-looking either. Mom asked her what she had found out.

“This is the key that your father was looking for. He didn’t want your husband to find it accidentally and go to the bank. Your dad was a smart man, Meggie, if you didn’t already know that.” She said that she had, but Allen hadn’t been running the gallery by the time her dad had died. “No. But he must have figured he would at some point. You should go to the bank and open the drawer. It’s a large one, so if I were you, I’d take my daughters with me.”

Since it was still early afternoon, she abandoned the desk in favor of going to the bank with her mom. Andi was going to meet them there as she’d had an appointment with another artist that might well be a part of their grand opening. While they were gone, the desk would be moved to her office and cleaned up. She wanted to be there when it was set, but Cass promised her that he’d help her move it if it wasn’t in the right place.

As soon as her mom asked the banker if she could open the box, he had to go and look it up. When he came out of his office, he looked so strangely at them that Lindsley just knew that it wasn’t going to pan out to be anything. Disappointed, she was shocked when he told her the box numbers. Not one box but a few of them

“As far as I know, no one has opened the boxes since it was purchased sixty-seven years ago. At some point, your father came in and added your name, Ms. Benson as another person that could get into the box along with your mom. Your signature is there on that line.” Mom laughed and said she remembered doing this. She’d been about eight years old. Then she asked about how it wasn’t a rental but a box her dad had purchased. “When the bank first opened, there wasn’t a big demand for renting boxes to store things in. I don’t think people were willing to trust banks yet, so they sold them in order to pay for some of the costs of having them put in. I think your father was the first one to buy them. The number on his drawers are one through seven.”

“Wait, there are seven drawers that belonged to Grandda?” Mr. Elfish told her he’d been there when they were bought but never thought of them again since before his passing. “Elfish. You…?”

“Yes, my dear. I’m an elf, or better yet, a fae.” She hugged him, and he laughed. “Well, that was very welcome but unexpected. How about we get you ladies into the vault and see what it is that your relative saved for you.”

Mom was going to open the first drawer. But before she could insert the key into the lock, she handed it over to her. Telling her that since she’d found the key that she should have the honors. Putting the key into the lock, she was surprised at how easily it slid in and opened. Pulling the drawer out, she sat it on the table before pulling open the lid. It was one of the larger drawers in the vault.

“Wait.” They both turned to Andi. “Let’s get three of them out so that we can each look into the boxes all at the same time. I don’t know if that’s a good idea or not, but I want to have the element of surprise myself. This is so exciting that I’m about to pee myself.”

“Andi. What a thing to say.” They all three laughed. Once Lindsley was able to pull the two drawers from the wall, she sat them on the table with her box. “Well, what do you say, my dears? On the count of three?”

Pulling open the lid when mom said three, Lindsley was slightly disappointed in her box. Then as she began pulling out the ugly leather bags and feeling their weight, she opened the first one and poured it out into her hand. Uncut diamonds.

There were perhaps two dozen of them laying in the palm of her hand when Andi put her hand next to hers. Hers were uncut rubies. Mom had emeralds. They stared at the gems without saying a word. That was when Jasper and his mom joined them.

“They’re yours, aren’t they?” Andonna shook her head and smiled. “Then they’re yours, Jasper. Right? There is no way that my grandda had all these locked in a safety deposit box for all these years and it being legal.”

“Oh, they’re yours now. Had you not opened this, I would never have put the man I once knew to your grandda, Lindsley. He was a very, very good friend of mine.” Mom asked her how he’d come to have them. “He found them in the other realm when looking for a flower for me. As it turned out, he found a great many plants that I thought were all gone for me. This, these gems that he found seemed little payment for what he gave me in return.”

“A flower?” Jasper explained that the flower he’d been looking for had been used almost to extinction. When his mom had hired her grandda to find the bushes that the flower grew on, because it seemed that he had a knack for finding lost things, he would dig up the plant and find gems of all sorts in the roots of them. “I’m sorry. So you let him keep what he found? That’s a great deal of money even if there was only one of them.”

“This is going to sound simply terrible, but in our realm, where we live most of the time, we have no use for money. Gems yes. They decorate the walls and crowns. All sorts of things like that. But not for any kind of monetary gain.” Putting the diamonds back in the bag, she emptied a second one the same way. “Those are moonstones. Very valuable in this world. Anyway, once your grandda found the first bush, its root system was damaged by all the gems. It was what was making them hard to grow. Once he was able to locate a dozen of the bushes, he figured out a way for us to grow them without harming them. Not only that, but he also showed us how to break the roots into smaller bushes so that we could propagate them easily in the gardens he helped us put together.”

“So this is all from a dozen plants?” It was Andonna who explained this time. “I guess I can see where that would be helpful. Knowing how to find them after grandda showed you would have given you a larger crop to work with. But I don’t understand why you gave him all this. Couldn’t you have, I don’t know, invested it into something else?”

“We did in your grandfather. After he was successful in finding the flowers that we needed, it was a simple thing for us to hand over a list of things that we thought too were nevermore. But he was not only able to find nearly everything on the list, but he was also able to make it so that we knew how to dry the seeds as well as work with the roots. Your grandda was a brilliant man.” Mom said that he’d never said a word about it. “No, he’d not. He told us once that he was going to make it so that his children, if he ever had any, would not have to work as hard as he did to make a living. The gallery at that time was closed down due to men going off to war.”

They went through each of the bags. There were ten in the first drawer and a dozen or more in the next five. Each of them had gems in them, all uncut but for the last drawer. There were tiny bags in the drawer, filling it from top to bottom of seeds.

Each of them was marked with what they were. There was paperwork in the bottom of it, written in her grandda’s handwriting on how and when to seed them. Not only that but things they could be used for such as illnesses and wounds.

Jasper and his mom were more excited about them than they were about the gems. When asked if she wanted to take them back to her castle, she declined, saying that someday there might be a need for such seeds and it would be nice to know that they were safely hidden away to be used.

“Would they still be viable, you think?” Andonna only had to put her hand on one of the bags to know they were just as viable as they had been when he’d sorted them out and put them away. Mom held one bag of the seeds to her chest, sobbing. “He was a better man than I could ever have imagined, my dad. Oh, how I wish he was here so that I could tell him again how much I loved him.”

The three of them hugged. She missed him as well. And her dad. They’d been taken from them much too early. Oh, to have them both around to meet Loman and his family. When they were ready to go, they had to decide what to do with the drawers of gems. It was Andi that had a good idea.

“Leave them here. We know they’re in the bank, so we don’t have to worry about it right now. I guess someone could come in and try to get to them, but so long as no one knows they’re here, we should be all right until we think of something.” Andonna said that since Mr. Elfish was here, no one would ever find the gems. Mom thought that was a great idea. “Good. I hope you like this one as well. I think we should each take one gem from each bag to have something made in a way that would remind us of our grandda and dad, not all at once. That would—” Jasper laughed before speaking.

“I’d gladly do that for you. That way, no one would have to know that you have them, and I can fashion a lovely necklace or bracelet—anything you like really and a jeweler wouldn’t know a thing about it.” She and Andi agreed it should be mom first since it was her dad. “Excellent idea. Yes, I love that. Once you figure out what you want in the way of a piece, I’ll do that for you. Anytime you wish.”

After leaving all the gems at the bank, they decided to go to dinner, just the three of them. They’d been working so hard on the gallery that they felt they deserved a night off together. Careful about what they spoke about, not bringing up the gems at all, they had a good time relishing in the fact that their dad hadn’t found the key before they had.