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  They’d become rather creative in the last month or so. They’d have to get even more creative as she grew bigger in the coming months.

  “I love you, Samantha,” he murmured, his voice rough as his rhythm increased. “I’m not going to last long, baby. You feel so damn good.”

  She smiled and arched beneath him, crying out. She was so close. Unbelievably close and she wanted to come with him. “I love you too.”

  They came together in a rush of heat and shivering, sweaty bodies, clinging to each other when it was all over. She rested her head on his chest, eyes closed and breathing slow and even as she tried to calm her racing heart.

  “I’m only gone for a month, if that,” he said quietly, picking up her hand and bringing it to his mouth. He kissed each of her knuckles, his lips lingering on her skin. “And when I come back, you’ll have the baby.”

  “Not that fast. It’ll be a couple more months before Junior makes his appearance in the world.” She smiled and he bent down and kissed her again, as if he couldn’t help himself. “Do you think everything’s going to be okay?”

  His brows lowered as he watched her. “What do you mean?”

  “Bringing a baby into this crazy world, it’s kind of…messed up. People give me strange looks sometimes. I’ve even been approached by strangers, asking why I would have a baby now.”

  “Do you tell them it’s none of their damn business?”

  Oh, he sounded furious. And when she looked up at him, his expression was fierce, eyes blazing with heat. He was so protective, and she loved that about him. “I say it in a much more polite manner.”

  “Good for you. I’d tell them all to fuck off.” The disgust in his voice was clear.

  “So you don’t think it’s a mistake?”

  “Hell, no. Sam, look at me.” He tucked two fingers under her chin and lifted her face, staring deep into her eyes. “This was meant to be. Our finding each other, our baby, all of it. Don’t ever doubt it.”

  She blinked, overwhelmed by the intensity of his words, in his gaze. “Okay.”

  “I was thinking…” The words faded, and he cleared his throat. “I was thinking maybe you should name him Brent. After your father.”

  “Oh, Russ.” She hugged him close, tears threatening. “I love that.”

  “I thought you would.”

  Samantha pulled away from him. “Brent Russell Weaver.”

  He grimaced. “Really? The Russell bit? Don’t saddle him with that.”

  “He’ll be strong like his daddy.”

  “I’ve never liked my name.”

  “It’s a wonderful name.” She smiled. “I want him to be named after the two most important men in my life.” Rearing up, she kissed him. “I love you, Russ.”

  “I love you too, baby,” he murmured against her lips. “More than you’ll ever know.”

  About the Author

  After leaving the working world to become a stay at home mom, Karen Erickson realized she needed to get crackin’ and pursue her lifelong dream of being a published writer. A busy mother of three, she fits her precious writing time in between chasing her children, taking care of her wonderful husband and pretending she has a maid. She lives in California.

  You can visit Karen at her website www.karenerickson.com, her blog karenerickson.blogspot.com or her Facebook page: www.facebook.com/karenericksonwritesromance.

  Look for these titles by Karen Erickson

  Now Available:

  Spontaneous

  Fortune’s Deception

  Fortune’s Chance

  Fortune’s Promise

  Jessie’s Girl

  Forbidden

  Tangled

  Under My Umbrella

  My Favorite Mistake

  Baby Don’t Lose My Number

  Notorious

  Simple Twist of Fate

  Coming Soon:

  Worth the Scandal

  The World after the End of the World will never be the same again…

  Reaper

  © 2011 Mina Carter

  Sanctuary. Clichéd name, but the sentiment was still the same. Ten years after the end of the world, ex-soldier Mason and a small group of humans defend their fortified town against creatures of myth and legend made real. But with dwindling game to hunt and a lycan pack in the area looking for an easy meal, just surviving is getting harder every day.

  Andy has a few screws loose, and she knows it. She’s been on the road since the bombs fell and changed humanity forever. Driven by inhuman instincts she tracks the newly and soon-to-be dead and dispatches their souls to the afterlife. Sometimes they go quietly, most put up a fight. She doesn’t care either way. Her ambition in life is to find her next hit of coffee and one day, maybe, sleep in a real bed again.

  Then Andy’s instincts bring her to Sanctuary and its enigmatic leader, Mason, and even the world after the end of the world will never be the same again…

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Reaper:

  Ten years, three months and four days. That was how long it had been since the worst day of Andy’s life. Of course, since that date coincided with the Apocalypse—Doomsday, Armageddon or whatever you wanted to call it—it had been a pretty shitty day the world over.

  Things hadn’t got much better. She settled her backpack more securely on her shoulders and studied the road ahead. She’d walked these roads since that day, always on the move, never stopping for more than a night or two. She’d tried to in the beginning, but she was just too different to hide amongst humanity for long.

  She trudged along the road, the tightening in her calf muscles telling her she was heading up an incline. She wouldn’t have known otherwise, after a while everything looked the same. Dust and fuck-all else leading into foothills and mountains in the distance. Apart from yesterday…yesterday she’d passed a tree. It had provided hours of entertainment.

  Reaching the top of the incline something new caught her eye. Pausing to rest her booted foot on the bumper of an abandoned car, she shielded her eyes and squinted. Despite her dark glasses the bright sun foiled her vision, making the dark smudge on the horizon dance and waver.

  She growled under her breath. Why the hell couldn’t she have gotten useful abilities like some other paranormals? The ability to change form and run like a Lycan, or the night vision of a Vampire…either would have been useful. At least, far more useful than what she did have, dangled on the end of a chain at the disposal of fate, chasing silver threads only she could see. It sucked, big time.

  Of course, most people would tell her to look on the upside—she couldn’t die. Would’ve helped if she’d known that before she’d tried to commit suicide. Three times. That had been the year after the war. She’d been way unstable back then. Mind you, when you were forced to kill your family, friends—hell, everyone you knew, then it was bound to knock a few cogs loose upstairs. Since then she’d come to terms with what she was, somewhat, and just did her job.

  The smudge on the horizon resolved itself into a plume of smoke. Five silver lines, the sort only she could see, flickered and lit up in the corner of her vision. They headed off straight towards the smoke.

  She sighed. Another job. No rest for the wicked.

  The small black mark on the horizon grew larger and larger as she walked. Eventually it became a small town. Andy studied it as she trudged closer. Most humans lived in places like these. Towns fortified against any sort of attack—be that attacks from other humans looking for supplies, or attacks from any of the paranormal types.

  This one had particularly good defenses. The person who’d put them together had really known what they were doing. She passed an outer redoubt of steel and iron barricades, nodding at the stony-faced guard stationed at the lookout post.

  The silver lines she was following didn’t lead into the town. Instead they branched off to the right. Like a good little puppy she followed them. The skin between her shoulder blades itched as she walked. Within seconds more armed figures appeared on the
main wall, silent and watching. She was impressed. These people were on the ball.

  Turning the corner she found what she was looking for. A funeral pyre smoldered away, billowing black smoke high into the air. The wind changed direction for a second. Wrinkling her nose she tried to breathe through her mouth. Humans smelt bad enough when cremated, but Ghouls were even worse.

  She didn’t need to count the bodies on the pyre. Five silver lines fed straight into what she was looking for. Five souls, the ones belonging to the remains on the pyre, stood waiting for her. Standing in a nice little line, ready and waiting for her to reap them.

  Used to the drill Andy took a deep breath, and let her spirit slip into the Shade. The layer between life and the afterlife, it was where the souls waited for a Reaper to come along and send them into the afterlife.

  The world changed hue, painted in shades of black and grey. There was no color here, no life to speak of, and the truly alive couldn’t enter this place. She looked over her shoulder at the figures on the wall watching her. To them she would appear to be looking at the pyre. She could step bodily into the Shade if she had to, but figured that would freak them out too much if she just disappeared.

  As it was, they wouldn’t see her reach around and under her pack, drawing the twin sickles sheathed there with practiced movements. A good thing, because she didn’t fancy being hit with enough lead to drop a rhino. She’d only had this jacket a couple of weeks, and the last thing it needed was ventilation.

  One woman with a job to do. One gorgeous hacker with a plan. One apocalypse. Any questions?

  Brighid’s Cross

  © 2011 Cate Morgan

  Aika Lareto is a descendent of St. Brighid in her incarnation of all things fire and warfare in a time when heroes were revered as gods. In 2025, this means Aika is hunted by all things demon and government. All she wants is to get on with her work as guardian of the dregs scraping out a fringe existence in London’s blitzed underground—the lost, forgotten and the just plain ignored.

  Declan Pryce is the hacker who finds her first. Quite a feat, considering current ruling government conglomerate Dreamtech has issued a bounty on Aika’s head for her ability to bypass their security systems.

  When she escapes Dreamtech’s net, the vote is unanimous—Aika is a liability in need of immediate resolution—dead or alive is entirely her choice.

  No choice, really. She’ll take death over disloyalty every time. Declan has a plan that doesn’t include falling for an impossible woman in an impossible situation. She has plans of her own that don’t leave room for a love life.

  If they’re incredibly lucky, it just might work.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Brighid’s Cross:

  Declan Pryce had not gotten a full day’s sleep since a bomb exploded his parents out of existence in the Seven-Year War. So it came as no surprise when nightmares plagued his sleep once again, entangling him in scratchy army blankets and discarded him, spent, onto the shabby rug. He stared into the lowering dark of early evening, sweat plastering hair into his eyes.

  When his breathing slowed sufficiently for feeling to return to his limbs, he disentangled himself from the twisted bedding and heaved himself onto the edge of the narrow bed. His shaking hand knocked a water bottle from the bedside table as he reached for it, issuing a muted thud on the area rug. He retrieved it with a murmured curse, experiencing instant relief when the lukewarm liquid settled his stomach.

  Knowing sleep would not return, he slouched across his small illegal loft to the bank of computers humming like a beehive in the mellow quiet. A folding table against the wall offered a makeshift kitchenette in the form of an expensive coffee maker and cheap microwave.

  “Hello, darlings.” He slid into his worn chair that shrieked like a banshee if he leaned too far back and flipped on the coffee maker. Despite the audible protests of the seat’s bearings, it fit him like a comfortable pair of jeans.

  His three monitors awakened at the sound of his voice, the machines activating their program sequences. He decided to run through CCTV clips captured by his patch into its outmoded system first. A few he saved for later examination—most he discarded. His coffee maker dispensed fresh, strong brew into a plain black ceramic cup as a new string of grainy images began its run. Halfway through he stopped the video stream and restarted it, not certain of what he’d seen. It took three repeated viewings, at slower speeds and narrowly focused pixilation, to confirm with his eyes what his brain did not believe. He replayed it again, coffee cooling with fragrant accusation.

  A figure in dark clothes strode down a street in what was not quite the vice district, flickering in the vivid dancing lights of enticements. His or her gait was one of purpose, belied by a hint of absentmindedness only the truly unconcerned could manage. She, he could see now—walked against the crowd, skirting revelers and the human race as a whole. He leaned closer.

  She passed an alley and was obviously spooked by what she sensed there, because she inexplicably disappeared.

  Quickly, without conscious volition, he re-engaged the link to this particular feed and searched nearby cameras for video from different angles. He was annoyed to find facial-recognition programs could not gather sufficient info to identify the walker.

  Finally he found her again, beneath the overhang on a far corner. For a fleeting instant she looked nearly full on into the camera, a sardonic smile twitching the corners of her mouth. He took a snapshot and followed her progress, camera to camera, until she disappeared into the Burnout Zone, where no satellite feed would ever reach again. He exhaled, printed the shot and stuffed his coffee into the microwave. While he waited for it to reheat, he cleared a space on his corkboard and hung the photo among the wild detritus of false hopes and starts. When the microwave dinged he retrieved his coffee and sat back to consider the odd light in her eyes while his mind raced with possibilities.

  Had he actually found one? One of the angels or demons who had begun walking the earth during the war? Or was she one of the others, still human, yet more? Demi-human, he called them, for lack of a better term. Part human, part…something else, biding their time until the Horsemen rode. Signs of the approaching apocalypse had been lining up for years, but hardly anyone was paying attention.

  He was inclined to believe the latter. There was something ancient in her eyes, a weary but determined set to her closed-off face. He wore the same expression whenever he looked in a mirror.

  The Burnout Zone. No one ever went there that didn’t have to. The old bridge was little more than a heap of rubble, its tunnels shelter for a black market of shady business dealings and their dealers, a fringe society of the hopeless and not-entirely-there. He’d gone there once or twice, but it was not an experience he cared to repeat. He frequented his own brand of underground establishments with their unique collection of conspiracy theorists, where the food was better and hygiene more of a priority. Nor had the contents of his pockets ever wandered off in pursuit of their own adventures.

  One of his other monitors flashed a black-and-red warning at him, buzzing a computer version of a genteel cough to attract his attention. He spun his chair and tapped a few keys to access the new information.

  This one wasn’t from one of his regular channels, rather a back channel he’d rarely seen triggered. It was, in fact, a new bounty activated by someone handled as The Agent.

  One guess who the target was.

  Once again his coffee was left to cool, abandoned, as his chair spun gently in place.

  Declan was perfectly accustomed to being ignored. It tended to be a point of pride in his business. The organizations from which he skimmed information didn’t even know they should be looking for him, this anonymous cortex phantom who plucked innocuous facts and tidbits from their stores the way the tooth fairy plucked teeth from beneath pillows without the owner ever waking up.

  Now, however, it proved to be something of a problem.

  “Excuse me? Sir? Do you know where I can find this
woman?” A rack of metal necklaces with homespun pendants swayed as yet another dreg skirted his outstretched arm. “I mean, ma’am. Miss? Sorry.”

  “They think you’re private security.”

  Declan turned eagerly at this fresh evidence of his own existence. He was beginning to wonder. “I’m not. Do you know who she is?” He proffered his hand comp hopefully, the grainy image flickering in the orange light of an overhead oil lantern.

  The man behind the counter didn’t bother to look up from the chrome headlamp shell he was industriously wiping clean as he shook his thinning blonde head. If anything, he increased his efforts. “Sorry.”

  Anger seeped into Declan’s voice, after a long struggle with his patience. “You didn’t even look.”

  “Don’t have to. Doesn’t matter.”

  “Why the hell not?” And immediately regretted language and tone when he saw the white collar paired with the black shirt.

  The priest set the part down with extraordinary long-fingered hands and infinite care. “Look around you. What do you see?”

  Declan shrugged. “I don’t know. Dregs, I suppose.”

  The smile on the other man’s face was bittersweet. “These people you call dregs have been run to ground, given up on by nearly everyone. The Burnout Zone is the only haven they have left.”

  “Point being?”

  “Point being, no one here gives up anyone else. It may be the only rule we’ve got, but it’s ours.”

  “Stop messing about with the Obi Wan Kenobi act, will you?” Declan ground out in deliberate tones meant for the slow of thinking. “It’s important I find her before someone else does.”

  The priest nodded and went back to his polishing. “I shouldn’t worry about it. She’ll see them coming.”

  Two could play it that way. “If you’re so keen on shielding her, shouldn’t someone tell her there’s a bounty on her head?”