  Kination dominated quintessence models of dark energy have the intriguing
feature that the relic abundance of thermal cold dark matter can be
significantly enhanced compared to the predictions from standard cosmology.
Previous treatments of such models do not include a realistic embedding of
inflationary initial conditions. We remedy this situation by constructing a
viable inflationary model in which the inflaton and quintessence field are the
same scalar degree of freedom. Kination domination is achieved after inflation
through a strong push or "kick" of the inflaton, and sufficient reheating can
be achieved depending on model parameters. This allows us to explore both
model-dependent and model-independent cosmological predictions of this
scenario. We find that measurements of the B-mode CMB polarization can rule out
this class of scenarios almost model independently. We also discuss other
experimentally accessible signatures for this class of models.

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology;Astrophysics;High Energy Physics - Theory