HAVE YOURSELF A MERRY LITTLE APOCALYPSE

HOLIDAY REMIXES

LIZ SHIPTON

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination.

HAVE YOURSELF A MERRY LITTLE APOCALYPSE

Dec. 2, 2023.

Copyright © 2023 Liz Shipton

Written by Liz Shipton

Tyrannosaurus Yes Media

CONTENT WARNING

This book contains an explicit sex scene.

CONTENTS

One

Two

Three

Four

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ONE

WHEN THE APOCALYPSE came to her town, Marla was on vacation.

A week-long solo backpacking trip in the John Muir Wilderness. Well—solo except for Bazooka. She’d been planning it for the better part of a year; part of her training for the Pacific Crest Trail, which she had been intending to tackle the following Spring. She wasn’t sure if she was going to attempt the PCT anymore now, although she supposed there was no reason not to. Just because everyone in her hometown and probably the country and maybe the world was dead, didn’t mean she couldn’t go hiking.

Marla vividly remembered the day she had returned from her trip to discover that Stillwater, California had succumbed to some horrible disease. Bazooka had known something was wrong immediately—dogs always did. He whined and pawed at the window of Marla’s shitty blue pickup as it rattled down the deserted main street toward her mobile home on the outskirts of town. The cell towers had still been functioning at that point and Marla had pulled out her phone for the first time in a week. The last update she could find was days old. “A very bad flu,” a news outlet on the East Coast called it. “The fucking apocalypse,” was more like what it seemed to Marla.

The initial shock had lasted about a week. Marla wandered through town in a daze. It was April and the wildflowers were blooming, and for some reason, that seemed totally insane to Marla. That so much life could still be happening.

She had finally snapped out of it when she came across someone’s cat, yowling behind a closed and locked kitchen door, and realized that, without his humans, the poor thing was going to starve. That had spurred her into action, and marked the beginning of what she called her “Great Animal Crusade.”

She spent the next week going door-to-door, finding and feeding all the pets and livestock that had been left behind, and heaving the bodies of their humans into her pickup to drive to the crematorium in the next town over.

Eight months later, the town was corpse-free, and her days were primarily structured around the Animal Crusade. When she wasn’t feeding and watering animals she was tending her enormous garden, siphoning gas from abandoned vehicles, or driving to the next town over (Stillwater had only one tiny market, and she had exhausted its supplies in just a few weeks.)

She had moved out of the rinky-dink mobile home she’d lived in since her early twenties and taken up residence in one of the big fancy houses on the hill. No one else was using it, and she would never have been able to afford a place like it Before.

She had buried the nice old couple who had lived there in the backyard and marked the graves with a couple of cärns. For some reason, the crematorium didn’t seem right for them. Not when she was taking their home.

It was December now, and there was frost on the ground in the mornings. Marla had no heat or electricity, but that was fine. There was a nice big fireplace and the house was well-insulated. She had grown up dirt-poor and she knew how to split a log. She had finished harvesting her first ever yield from the garden and was learning how to can and pickle from some books she’d picked up from the library. Her only concern was that the water she’d collected during the rain might freeze, but she figured she’d cross that bridge when she came to it. For now, she split wood. Fed the animals. Tended her garden and smoked the weed she was growing there. The house she had moved into had a piano, and she’d started teaching herself to play. She liked the quiet. All in all, life was not so bad.

And then Ben showed up.

It was a week before Christmas and Marla was in the front yard splitting wood when his Tesla turned the corner at the end of the road. Of course someone in post-apocalyptic California was still driving a fucking Tesla. It glided nearly silently down the street and pulled right into the driveway where Marla was standing. As if the driver had placed some kind of covert tracking beacon on her months ago and had now come to find his mark.

Marla stared through the windshield at the man behind the wheel. His hair was dark blonde and his skin white but tanned. He was sporting about three-days-worth of stubble and the sleeves of his button-down were rolled up to the elbows. She vaguely recognized him.

Bazooka came charging around from the back of the house, barking his head off, and Marla swung her ax onto one shoulder and squared her stance. The man behind the wheel sat there staring back at her as Bazooka ran circles around his car. Finally, he rolled down the window.

“Howdy.”

Marla shifted her weight to one hip and said nothing. Bazooka put his two massive paws on the driver’s side door and stuck his big head through the window. He was wagging his tail now and trying to get his tongue onto the man’s face. Some lousy guard dog.

“Would you mind calling off your dog?” the man said.

“Would you mind getting off my driveway?” Marla replied.

The man managed to get his elbow in Zook’s face and used it to shove him out of the car. Zook trotted back to Marla and sat on her foot, and did one big bark. The man started to open the door, but Marla swung the ax off her shoulder and leveled it at him.

“Don’t you get out of that car.”

He frowned in surprise and put up his hands.

“Where did you come from?” Marla demanded.

“San Francisco.”

“What are you doing here?”

He put one hand on the door and began to slowly push it open again.

“I’m not kidding!” Marla lifted the ax. “You’d better stay in that car.”

“Lady—” The man smiled uncertainly, but Marla was having none of it. She had read The Road. She knew what “other people” meant in a post-apocalyptic hellscape. Rapists and cannibals, the lot of them. She shoved Zook aside with her foot and took three big steps toward the car, swinging the ax over her head with both hands.

“Jesus Christ, Lady!” The man slammed the door shut and fumbled with the starter. The vehicle whispered to life and he grabbed the wheel in both hands. “Alright!” he yelled, as he began to back down the driveway. “Alright! I’m going!”

Marla followed him until the car was in the street, then she stood wide-legged across the driveway, holding the ax out in front of her like a sword as he whipped around, tires squealing. Marla glared at his face through the passenger side window as he shot her one last baffled look and drove away.

She watched Zook tail the Tesla until it disappeared around the corner at the other end of the street, then lowered the ax and blew a long, white breath into the cold sky.

TWO

WHEN SHE WOKE the next morning, the car was parked in the driveway next door.

Marla stood barefoot on the porch in her sleepshirt and a thick coat, sipping coffee from her propane camp stove and surveying the vehicle with narrow eyes. It was an SUV, white, with tinted windows and California plates. So he may have been telling the truth about coming from San Fran.

As she watched, the front door of the house next door opened and the man stepped out. He was sporting even thicker stubble and wearing jeans, boots, and the same rumpled button-down that looked slept in. He didn’t see her as he walked down the driveway to the car, opened one of the rear doors, and started wrestling something large off the back seat.

It took him several minutes to get the thing out. When he had finally wrangled it past the doors and set it on the driveway next to the car, Marla could see it was a gas-powered generator. She’d seen them in the Home Depot in the next town over, but had never thought it would be worth it to get one. Gasoline was a finite resource these days, and she couldn’t spare it for a generator when she needed it for her truck. For Mr. Tesla, of course, who didn’t need gas for his car, it would be no fucking problem—although what was he going to do when the juice ran out on that battery?

Truth be told, Marla wasn’t totally confident she knew how to run a generator, anyway. And besides, she had a fireplace and plenty of candles. What did she need electricity for?

She watched the man hoist the thing into his arms and stagger up the driveway with it toward the house. He maneuvered it through the front door and disappeared.

Marla sipped her coffee and decided not to leave the house today. The animals would have to wait. Even if this guy wasn’t a rapist or a cannibal, like The Road suggested he might be, he was clearly up to something.

Hours later, she heard the sound of a motor starting, and put her face to the kitchen window. He was out in the backyard, standing over the generator, which he had apparently gotten running, because it was making a horrible, ungodly racket. A few five-gallon gas cans were scattered about the dead, frosty grass.

Marla pursed her lips and glared at the generator. For eight months, she had heard nothing but the sound of birds and wind in the trees. For eight months, she had been the only person left on the planet, and to be honest, she had rather liked it that way.

He ran that goddamn generator all goddamn day, and by the time the sun went down, Marla was about ready to put her wood-splitting ax through her own head.

The next morning, he was in the backyard again, banging around with a hammer. He had taken the Tesla and disappeared for a few hours yesterday, and Marla now realized he had been raiding Home Depot in the next town over. There were three generators sitting in the frosty, dead grass now, and he appeared to be trying to build some kind of box for them—at least, he was nailing together planks of wood that he had pulled from the Tesla’s trunk.

Marla, bundled in a sweater and her fleece-lined boots, sat at her kitchen counter, sipping her fourth cup of coffee and watching him through the window. He looked like he barely knew what he was doing with that hammer, and was muttering to himself and occasionally swearing loudly.

It was nine thirty, and although Marla could still see the man’s breath curling and evaporating, she suspected it was hot in the clear, midmorning sun. Steam was rising from the ground where the frost was melting. He set down the hammer and dragged the back of his arm across his face. He unbuttoned his top two buttons and pulled the shirt away from his chest. His hair was a little long, and he shoved it out of his eyes as he leaned against the fence that separated their two yards. Again, Marla felt a glimmer of recognition. She knew him from somewhere, she was sure of it. But damned if she could put her finger on where.

Then, quite suddenly, as though he couldn’t stand to have the thing on any longer, he pulled open the rest of the buttons on his shirt and shucked the thing off onto the ground. Marla’s eyes widened. His chest and shoulders glistened with sweat, and the planes of his stomach made a flat, hard V as they disappeared into the top of his pants. Marla put her eyes on her coffee mug.

When she lifted them again, he had disappeared. Frowning, she scanned the backyard. Seeing nothing, she got slowly off her stool and padded to the window to peer around its edge.

A knock sounded at her front door.

Marla jumped. Gripping her coffee cup, she stared across the kitchen, through the living room, to the door to the outside. Her ax leaned against the wall beside it. Above her, she heard Bazooka jump to his feet and tear through the master bedroom and down the stairs. He landed at the front door, barking.

Another knock came through from the other side.

Very slowly, Marla set her coffee cup on the counter and crept toward the door. She picked up the ax in one hand and put the chain across with the other, then shoved Zook out of the way with her hip and cracked the door.

The man’s face was on the other side, flushed and bright-eyed. Marla felt her eyes flick down to take in his still shirtless chest, gleaming with sweat. A smattering of dark blonde hair covered the center of it and trailed from his belly button into the top of his jeans.

“Couldn’t spare a glass of water, could you?” His eyebrows lifted expectantly. A long moment of silence passed, then he said, “¿Habla ingles? Parles-vous Français?”

Marla stared at him. What kind of maniac was this guy? Two days ago, she had threatened him with an ax, and now here he was on her porch asking for water like it had never happened.

“I brought a few gallons with me from the city,” he explained, “but they’re long gone and the water isn’t on at my place.”

My place. Marla narrowed her eyes. “The water isn’t on anywhere. You’ll have to collect your own.”

His smile faltered. “R—ight. I mean, I’m sure I’ll get there. But you couldn’t spare…just for now? Until I’m situated?”

“Situated.”

“Yeah…” His eyes fell on the ax in her hand, the head of it settled on the floor by her foot. “I was…planning to stay.” He looked back at her, and as their eyes met, a shimmer of recognition went through Marla again and she suddenly remembered how she knew him. His name was Ben Hudson. He had gone to her high school.

Marla doubted that Ben Hudson remembered her. In fact, it was doubtful he had even known she existed in high school. Ben had been one of those irritatingly handsome pricks who was good at everything and loved by everyone. He had played a sport, she remembered, although she couldn’t remember which one. Or possibly he was a surfer. He had been Homecoming King their senior year.

After graduation, Ben had been one of those who ‘got out.’ Gone to university somewhere—San Francisco, she assumed. Jesus, how long ago was that now? Fifteen years?

Marla shifted her weight. “Stay for how long?”

He spread his palms with a slight, sheepish smile. “I guess I don’t know.”

Glaring over his shoulder at the car parked in Ben’s driveway, Marla said, “How do you even charge that thing?”

“The Tesla?” Ben glanced over his shoulder. “To be honest, I don’t know yet. There was a guy in SF with a massive solar setup who let me charge it before I left. Out here…I’m not sure. It’ll go for a few more days, I think.”

“There are people in San Francisco still?”

“A few.”

Another long silence stretched between them, then Marla said, “Sure. I have water,” and shut and locked the door. She went to the kitchen, opened up the pantry and dragged out one of her ten gallon water jugs. She lugged it back to the front door, opened it, and heaved the jug onto the porch at Ben’s feet. Bazooka came tumbling out with it and immediately went to sniffing Ben’s boots.

“What’s the dog’s name?” said Ben.

Marla straightened, shoving hair from her face, and put her hands on her hips. “Bazooka.”

Ben laughed.

THREE

IT WAS unlikely that Ben Hudson was a rapist or a cannibal, Marla figured, but he was certainly annoying.

For the next five days, he ran those goddamn generators so often and for so long that Marla began to seriously consider sabotage. It would be so easy to go over there in the middle of the night and put her ax through the fucking things. But, she supposed, it wouldn’t be very neighborly.

Then again, it’s not as though Ben’s habits were exactly neighborly either. Apart from disturbing the peace with the generators, he was also fond of playing loud, depressing music on the stereo until late into the night. When it wasn’t Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” on repeat, it was Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven,” or something from Nirvana’s Unplugged album.

Marla had nothing against Pink Floyd or Nirvana. But for fuck’s sake, the guy never seemed to listen to anything else. It was making her piano practice nearly impossible. She was trying to learn “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”

The worst part of all of it was that Bazooka loved the asshole. Anytime Ben was in his backyard—which was all the damn time—Zook was out there with him. If Marla didn’t let Zook out, he whined and scratched at the door until she did. Zook didn’t even want to come on the daily Animal Crusade anymore. He preferred to stay with Ben.

The silver lining to this irritating cloud was that when Ben was out in the backyard, he could usually be counted on to have his shirt off. Marla couldn’t understand how he wasn’t freezing his balls off out there, but she wasn’t about to complain. It had been over a year since she’d seen anyone naked, and Ben Hudson was far from the worst human specimen she’d ever come across.

She watched him shamelessly. Sometimes she wasn’t even really watching him: she was remembering a time in high school that she had come around the corner of the gym to find him up against the wall with Jessica Foster, and had hidden herself out of sight and watched for far too long while they groped each other.

Mornings she thought about that she usually ended up slipping her hand into her pants right there in the kitchen, with her coffee untouched and steaming on the counter. Something about the fact that Jessica Foster had been two years older than Ben made it hotter. Like…was he that good? That he was pulling senior girls as a sophomore in high school? Marla figured there was no way, but still…she wondered.

If it wasn’t for that memory and the daily dose of glistening chest and shoulders that Marla had come to expect with her morning cup of coffee, she doubted she would have let him carry on with all the racket as long as she did.

But on Christmas Eve he crossed a line, and the frustration that had been simmering in her all week finally boiled over.

Marla stepped out of her front door that morning, on her way to do the Animal Crusade, to find Ben up on a ladder, shirtless, stringing Christmas lights under his second story gutter. She stopped by her truck and put her hands on her hips, watching him.

“You’re not seriously gonna use that generator to run Christmas lights.”

He glanced down over his shoulder and grinned. “Why not?”

“It’s a fucking waste of gasoline, that’s why not.”

“Aw.” He waved a hand and turned his attention back to the lights. “It’s Christmas.”

Shaking her head, Marla got into the truck and banged the door behind her.

When she got home that evening, Ben’s whole goddamn house was lit up like a Vegas strip mall. Bazooka was curled up on his front porch and didn’t even get up as Marla got out of her truck. The shadows were long and the air was cold and Marla wondered if there might be snow on the ground in the morning. She glared at Zook and stomped up the steps to her porch, slammed the door, and went to work making a fire.

That night, Marla tossed and turned under the glare of Ben’s stupid Christmas lights shining in her bedroom window. It was freezing. The fire in the living room didn’t heat upstairs very well, and the pile of blankets she always slept under didn’t seem to be keeping out the cold. Even having Zook in the bed with her wasn’t helping. He was just covering her in hair and taking up all the space.

The lights blinked and flashed at random, making bright patterns behind her eyelids. Where had Ben even gotten them from? Did he loot them from Home Depot? Find them tucked away in the attic of whoever’s house he was currently squatting in?

Marla thought there was something creepy about using dead people’s Christmas lights. Not to mention the waste. What was he thinking, running the generators all night just to power Christmas lights he couldn’t even see? They were outside for God’s sake. The only person benefiting from this ludicrous display was her.

Finally, around eleven, she had had enough. She flung the pile of blankets off and leapt out of bed, struggled into jeans, two shirts, a sweater, and her boots, and threw on her thickest coat. Zook trotted down the stairs behind her as she stormed out of the house, across the yard, and onto ‘Ben’s’ property.

The ladder was still leaning up against the house. Marla wrapped her frigid fingers around the closest rung and started to climb. The metal was slippery with frost and burned her hands, but she was so furious she barely registered it. She climbed all the way to the top, reached up to the gutter, and began tearing down the Christmas lights, silently and methodically. At the bottom of the ladder, Zook whined and paced in circles.

Suddenly, the window beside her opened and Ben’s head popped out.

“What are you doing?”

Marla’s heart shot into her mouth. Her entire world went into slow motion as her foot slipped and she toppled sideways. With a strangled cry that was half word and half some kind of primal, animalistic plea, she fell off the ladder.

A hand closed around her forearm, and she felt something wrench painfully in her shoulder as she jolted to a stop and hung there from one arm. She looked up to see Ben leaning halfway out of the window, both hands wrapped around her wrist.

“Give me your other hand!” he yelled.

Marla swung her other hand up and grabbed hold of Ben’s arm. He leaned back and her hip dragged painfully against the wall as he heaved her up through the window. She managed to get a toehold in a piece of trellis that was nailed just below the ledge, and kicked off it to propel herself the last few feet, and she tumbled through the window and landed on top of Ben in a heap of arms and legs.

For a moment, Marla could only lay there, her heart thundering. Then Ben groaned and beat against her shoulder with his hand and she realized her knee was in his crotch and rolled off him sideways and staggered to her feet.

Ben rolled carefully over and got up too, and the two of them stood there staring at each other, breathing hard. Under the window outside, Bazooka was barking.

“Jesus Christ,” Marla gasped. “Jesus fucking Christ.” She doubled over and put her hands on her knees. Ben stepped around her and closed the window.

“What the hell were you trying to do?”

“Your stupid…lights!” Marla waved a hand over her shoulder. “They’re shining in my window!”

“Oh.” Ben folded his arms as she straightened up and glared at him. “Well…sorry. I guess.”

Marla rotated her shoulder, wincing. Then she hiked up the side of her shirt and examined her hip where it had dragged on the wall.

“I have neosporin,” Ben said. “If you want.”

“I’m sure it’s fine.” She lowered her shirt and looked at him.

“I also have…whiskey. If you want that.”

Marla narrowed her eyes. “Why would I want whiskey?”

Ben shrugged. “It’s Christmas?”

“No. Thank you.” Marla made to step around him, but he sidestepped, blocking her way.

“Come on. I—feel bad. For almost killing you. And for…assaulting you with my Christmas lights.”

Marla glared at him. “Fine. One drink.”

They let Zook in the front door and then Marla perched on the kitchen counter while Ben poured two large glasses of whiskey. The kitchen was warm—he was running a space heater off the generators—and she shed her coat. Ben was barefoot in just a t-shirt and a pair of jeans, and Marla frowned at him as he handed her a glass.

“I run hot,” he explained, with another one of those sheepish grins.

Marla sipped her whiskey and tried not to picture what was under his t-shirt. Close up, he smelled like cinnamon and it was making her a little flushed.

He leaned against the counter next to her and folded his arms. “How long have you been living in that house?” he asked.

“About eight months.”

He sipped his drink. “Pretty lonely, isn’t it?”

“I like it.”

He nodded, smiling faintly.

“How long were you in San Francisco?” she asked.

“Since college. Got a job out there.” He swallowed and took a large sip of his drink. “Married. Had a kid.”

“Oh.” Marla watched his face carefully as he stared into his glass. Sometimes she forgot that the virus had been more than just a nice way for her to get some peace and quiet. She noticed now the tan line around Ben’s finger where a wedding ring had been removed. The kid must have been really young. That explained the Pink Floyd and “Tears in Heaven.” Suddenly, she felt like a monumental asshole for being so put out about his music.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He shrugged and drank again. “I came back here because I couldn’t take being sad in San Francisco anymore. But eight months is a long time ago.”

“Is it?”

“If you tell yourself it is.” He drained the last of his whiskey and set the glass on the counter. “What about you?”

Marla shook her head. “I never had anyone to lose.”

“I guess that makes sense. You always were kind of a lone wolf.”

Marla frowned.

“In high school. Maybe you don’t remember.”

“I remember you,” said Marla. “I just didn’t think you remembered me. Or…knew I existed.”

“I know who you are. You’re Marla Quinn. You’re terrifying.”

“Terrifying?”

“You had that haircut. And you were always wearing t-shirts with bands I had never heard of.”

“And that made me terrifying?”

“Why do you think everyone called you She Wolf?”

Marla bristled. “People called me She Wolf because they were assholes.”

He shook his head. “People called you She Wolf because they were scared of you.”

Marla sipped her drink. Her head felt a little slippery, but whether that was because of the whiskey or the revelation that Ben Hudson knew who she was, she wasn’t sure.

“Actually…” He reached around her for the whiskey bottle and poured himself another glass. She held out hers for a top-up and he watched her over the top of it while he poured. She felt herself getting warm, and dropped her gaze to the floor.

“Actually,” he continued, setting the bottle back on the counter, “I had a bit of a crush on you back then.”

She flipped her eyes back up and found him watching her. “No you didn’t.”

“Honest to God. I was always too scared to say anything.”

Her heart started to beat fast. Which made no sense. Less than thirty minutes ago she had been trying to dismantle this asshole’s Christmas decorations. Stupid handsome prick with his stupid athlete’s body. Or surfer’s body. Whatever it was.

“I thought you were cute,” he said, and sipped his drink. “I still do, actually.”

Marla’s face ignited. She set her glass down on the counter next to her and put the backs of her hands to her face.

Ben’s mouth tilted in amusement. He lifted his glass to his lips, but then paused and said, “And unless I’m mistaken, you think I’m cute too.”

Marla’s mouth fell open. “I—do not. Why would you…what are you even talking about?”

“You’re always watching me through the window.”

Marla gaped. “You’re always parading around out there with your shirt off!”

“Parading?” He lifted his eyebrows.

“Yeah, parading. In the freezing fucking December cold. Like some kind of maniac.”

He sipped his drink and set the glass down right next to hers. Then he braced his hands on either side of her and leaned forward so she felt his whiskey-scented breath on her cheek as he whispered, “I told you. I run hot.”

Marla felt her heart make a sudden bid for freedom up her windpipe. What the fuck was happening? Ben Hudson not only knew who she was, he was blatantly hitting on her. It was like she had entered some weird parallel universe.

She made herself take a steadying breath. He was an asshole. He put up way too many Christmas lights and made an unholy racket with his fucking generators. But he also smelled intoxicatingly good, and the heat radiating off him was making her a little dizzy.

“If you run hot enough to be shirtless outside in December,” she finally managed to say, “it must be killing you to have your shirt on in here now.”

He grinned and stepped back, pulling up the hem with both hands.

“Wow—” She put up her hands. “So you’re just gonna go ahead and take that right off.”

He paused, with just enough of his shirt lifted to reveal the shadows of his hip bones.

“I was joking,” she said. “I didn’t actually mean you should take it off.”

“Marla, I’ll be honest,” he replied, “I haven’t fucked anyone in almost a year, and I wasn’t lying when I said I thought you were cute.” And he tugged the shirt over his head.

Marla’s eyes went wide. “No one said anything about fucking,” she was about to say, but before she could get the words out, as those smooth planes of his spectacular stomach were revealed, the lights flickered, and they were plunged into darkness.

Marla restrained a shriek. Ben swore and she heard his shirt fall onto the floor.

“I think the generators just died.”

Catching her breath, Marla shot back, “Maybe you shouldn’t have hooked them up to all those goddamn Christmas lights.”

He sighed in the dark and she heard him scratching his stubble. “Well,” he said, “it’s going to get pretty chilly in here without the heater running.”

“I thought you said you run hot.”

“Not that hot.”

“Is there no fireplace here?”

“Nope.”

She sighed and drummed her fingers on the counter. The last thing she had wanted for the last week was for Ben Hudson to somehow end up in her house. But now, with cold air already whispering around her ankles, eight months of untapped desire stirring inside her, and the prospect of his naked chest being close enough to touch, it didn’t seem like such a bad idea.

“Fine,” she said. “We can go to my place. I don’t have electricity. But there’s a fireplace.”

She could hear him smiling as he said, “Oh yeah?”

“For one night. Tomorrow you’re on your own.” She hopped off the counter, stumbling a little drunkenly as she landed, and ran smack into the soft, firm warmth of his bare chest. His hands came to her hips.

“Easy, She Wolf…”

“Don’t call me that.”

His lips brushed her temple as he pulled her closer. “Sorry.”

“How would you like it if I called you Shirt Parade?”

He laughed against her hair. “I would love it if you called me Shirt Parade.”

His hands slipped to her ass and squeezed it. Was this actually happening? Her cheek had ended up against his collarbone and she could feel him getting hard against her hip. His heart beating through his chest. Her hands wandered to his shoulders, and he sighed as she traced her fingernails over them and put his lips against her neck.

“I wish I could see you,” he breathed.

She came to her senses enough to catch his hands as they drifted to the button of her jeans. “Then let’s go to my place.”

The fire had dwindled down to embers in the hearth, and Marla spent about ten minutes getting it going again. Zook followed her back and forth from the wood stack to the living room while Ben lit candles and then sat on the sofa with his forearms on his knees, watching her. It was frosty outside, and Ben had put his shirt back on (and a sweater and a jacket) to make the trek across to her house.

The cold, bitter dark of the living room had been enough to dull the edge of Marla’s lust when they arrived, and now she stood somewhat awkwardly in front of the fire, bundled in her coat and layers of sweaters and shirts again, not sure what to do.

Ben watched her with half-amused, half-calculating eyes. He tilted his head toward the piano in the corner. “Play something for me.”

“Play something for you?” Marla folded her arms.

“Why not?”

“I thought you were so were desperate to fuck me you couldn’t keep your shirt on.”

He smiled. “It’s not warm enough in here to take our clothes off yet.”

“I thought you ran hot.”

“It’s not warm enough in here for you to take your clothes off yet.”

She sighed and went to the piano. The sheet music for “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” was still open on the music stand. Sitting on the bench, Marla cupped her hands around her mouth and blew into them.

“My fingers are fucking frigid.”

Ben uncurled himself from the sofa. He ambled over and took her hands in his, and Marla’s breath disappeared as he slipped them under his shirt. His stomach was hard and warm and smooth. She spread her fingers wide and felt the muscles there and he flinched.

“Yowza. Those are some cold hands.”

“Did you play soccer?” she murmured.

“Surfed.”

They sat for a time and Marla felt her fingers begin to warm. Ben hummed softly and caught her by the wrists as her hands drifted to his belt. “Stop trying to distract me and play the goddamn piano, Marla Quinn.”

Rolling her eyes, she scooted sideways as he sat next to her, and put her fingers on the keys. She stumbled through a very poor rendition of the Christmas song she’d been practicing all week, and when she got to the end, he picked up her hands again and pressed his warm lips to the fingertips of one and then the other.

“You’ve gotten better since I got here,” he said. “Not good. But better.”

He leaned in and kissed her. Carefully, at first. More gently than she had been expecting him to. More gently than she wanted him to. She fisted his jacket and used it to pull him closer and he braced one hand beside her on the bench and moved into her. Marla felt her skin ripple from where his lips touched all the way to the top of her head. To the base of her spine. She let him press her backward, parting her lips so he could sweep his tongue in, filling her mouth with the sweet spice of cinnamon and whiskey.

“You taste like Christmas,” he said against her mouth.

Suddenly, the room felt too warm. Her sweaters were strangling her, the seam of her pants was torture, her breasts ached against the press of too many layers of shirt. She was desperate to feel the air on her skin, to feel his skin against hers, to feel his muscles beneath her fingers again.

She fumbled with the top button of his jacket, and he helped her wrench it open, then tore open the rest as well, as though he too had been seized by the same sudden uncontrollable need.

Shrugging it onto the floor, he stood, grabbed her under the thighs and hoisted her onto the piano. She landed on the keys in a jarring clash that was almost as discordant as her rendition of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” had been, and he was already ripping down the zipper on her jacket. He tossed it onto the floor, then tugged the sweater over her head, then his own.

When he peeled off one of her shirts, the layer underneath came with it and Marla was momentarily stuck, blind, with the shirts halfway around her head and her arms trapped in them. She managed to laugh as he yanked them off her but she felt like screaming, she was so desperate to get out of them.

He didn’t apologize for pulling her hair as the shirts came off, flung them aside, and slid his hands under her bra. A breathless sound choked her and she arched into his palms in a silent plea. Her whole body was trembling with need she hadn’t even realized she had spent the last eight months repressing. She felt like she would do violence to get his hands on more of her. His tongue.

He must have sensed it, or maybe he was as hungry to taste her as she was to be tasted, because he dropped his mouth to her neck and pressed his tongue to the sensitive skin there. Grazed the spot with his teeth and smiled against her when she moaned.

He slid his hands around her back and unhooked her bra, and she shuddered as the rush of cold air pebbled her breasts. He tugged his shirt over his head and dropped it on the floor and then shoved her knees open with his hips and hiked her to the edge of the keys with one hand, pulling their bare chests together and smashing his lips into hers.

The warmth of his skin against her breasts made her weak, and when he ground his impossibly hard, painfully hard cock against her aching center, she moaned with relief into his mouth. He rolled his hips again, echoing her moan, his other hand coming again to her breast, thumbing her nipple, and she was dizzy for a moment with the memory of him as a horny teenager, groping Jessica Foster against that wall behind the gym.

“I don’t want to fuck you on this fucking piano,” he said.

“Okay, Shirt Parade,” she gasped, “where do you want to fuck me?”

In response, he scooped her up and carried her to the sofa, dropped her onto it and sank to his knees in front of her. He unlaced her boots and literally hurled them across the room, then tugged open the button of her jeans. She lifted her hips to help him get them off, and when she was out of them and sitting on the leather couch in just her underwear and nothing else, she shivered.

He was still kneeling in front of her, about to unbuckle his belt, and stopped. “You’re cold.”

“A little.”

He stood and looked around, and, apparently seeing nothing that could help him rectify the situation, stooped and grabbed the bottom edge of the couch, tipped it up and dragged the whole thing, with her on it, to the fireplace. He set it down so close to the blaze that he almost tripped and fell backward into the fire, and she shot out a hand and grabbed his belt to pull him onto the couch with her. He managed to get his knees on either side and straddled her as he fell, and she put a palm on his chest to stop him crushing her.

With the weight of his hips pinning her to the couch, one hand flat on his chest, and the other hooked into his belt, she caught his eye and stopped. A moment of mutual understanding flashed between them, and he sat back, pushing both hands through his hair and drawing and releasing a deep breath.

“Let’s maybe not light ourselves on fire,” she said.

He nodded. Taking her face gently between his hands, he turned it up and touched his lips to hers again. She was acutely aware, now that nothing separated her from the leather of the couch but the thin fabric of her underwear, that a puddle of wetness had pooled between her thighs. She was aware of the roughness of his jeans against her bare legs, and the bulge straining at the front of them.

He pulled his lips from hers and looked at her, firelight dancing across his face, then bent and pressed a kiss to the front of her throat, and then her shoulder.

She closed her eyes and tipped her head back as he shifted backward, moving his mouth lower, and she arched away from the sofa, silently begging him to put his mouth on her breasts. She felt him chuckle, and he flicked her nipple with his tongue and kept moving down, until he had crawled backward off her and knelt on the floor between her legs, and she opened her eyes in a brief moment of panic to make sure he hadn’t landed in the fire.

He propped one elbow on the couch beside her leg and rested his temple against his fist, looking up at her, and trailed the fingers of his other hand along the inside of her thigh. Her legs parted as his fingers trailed higher. She could feel her center coil tighter, hotter, and slicker as his fingers drew closer and closer to it.

When they grazed the edge of her underwear, he stopped, and the air between them went still as they watched each other. Then his eyes sparked, and he stroked her so softly with his thumb through that thin ribbon of fabric that she whimpered like something had broken inside her.

He moved her underwear aside and slid his middle finger into her and Marla moaned and curled her hips toward him.

“Fuck,” he whispered, and reached down to adjust himself. He pressed his lips to the inside of her knee and flicked his eyes up to hers. “You want it bad, Marla Quinn.”

Marla, silent and not breathing, nodded.

With his finger still inside her, he kissed from her knee up the inside of her thigh until his breath warmed her peak, and Marla inhaled sharply. Then his tongue was on her and her hips had bowed clear off the couch, a fractured cry that was almost a word breaking from her throat. He swore and gripped her ass with his free hand, holding her tight against his face, sucking the most sensitive part of her wholly into his mouth and sinking his finger into her.

She writhed, gasping, overwhelmed. She wasn’t sure if she was trying to push more of herself against him or trying to get away. Her eyes were wide and her body was on fire as he pumped and sucked her, and she ground into his face with complete, reckless, unhinged abandon. It had been so long and she had been so fucking horny by the time he put his mouth on her that in less than a minute, it was happening.

“I’m gonna come,” she managed to choke to the ceiling, but it was already too late to do anything but give herself over to it. He groaned his approval against her and the sound was lost under the stream of expletives pouring out of her.

He devoured her until she was shaking, until the force of her climax had tipped beyond pleasure and she had to drive her hands into his hair and pull him away, and she collapsed against the sofa and tilted her head from side to side, like she was looking for the bits of her that had been lost in the explosion.

When she came back together and looked down, Ben was resting his chin on her knee and watching her with a small, self-satisfied smile. His hands were clasped around her ankle. His face was flushed and gleaming with her wetness and his eyes were half-focused and he was breathing hard.

“Fucking beautiful.”

Marla reached for him and pulled him onto the couch with her and began working his belt open, but he caught her hands and stilled her. “We should probably…use something.”

Marla felt her chest collapse. “What? Fuck. Do you have anything?”

He shook his head, and Marla felt like she might burst into tears. She needed him inside her. She needed to come again. Immediately. Yesterday. Eight months ago.

Ben smiled and stood up and held out his hand to her. His cock was bulging immensely against the front of his jeans, and Marla felt like she could feel her mouth water just looking at it.

“I could just…return the favor.”

Ben shook his head. “No way. I think I know where we might find something.”

Marla frowned and looked up at him. “What?”

He again offered his hand, and cautiously she took it, and let him pull her to her feet. “We’ll have to leave the fire.”

He led her to the piano, where their various coats and shirts and jackets were strewn all over the floor like some kind of sweatshirt extinction event. He picked up her coat and held it out, and she slipped her arms into it and he pulled it around her, zipped it up, and kissed her forehead. Then he donned his own coat and held out his hand again.

Marla assumed, as he led her out of the living room, that they were going back to his place to find a condom or something. But to her utter bafflement, he instead led her to the stairs and began to climb them toward the darkness of the upstairs landing. Bazooka, curled in the corner near the fire, watched them go.

The cold nipped at Marla’s bare legs and feet and crept under her coat as they reached the top of the stairs. Ben led her to one of the closed doors at the end of the hall. Marla hadn’t opened it since she had first started living here. It was a bedroom, she knew. Not the master bedroom, where she slept. A kids’ room, or teenager’s—plastered with posters. There had been, thank God, no bodies of any kids in the house when she started living there. Just the nice old couple she had buried in the backyard. She figured the kids had been grown and gone long before the apocalypse.

Ben put his back against the door and reached behind him with one hand to turn the doorknob. His face in the dark was smiling, and Marla felt a sudden stab of panic. Where was he taking her? This was her house. She stopped as the door swung open, her heart pattering.

“What are you doing?”

Ben let go of the door handle and took both her hands in his. “Nothing nefarious.”

“Where are we going?”

He squeezed her hands. “You’ll see. Just trust me.”

Marla squinted at him in the dark. Rapist, said her brain. Cannibal. She didn’t know this man, she was quickly remembering. She hadn’t seen him in fifteen years. He was not the same Ben Hudson she had known in high school. She hadn’t even known Ben Hudson in high school. He could have already been a rapist or a cannibal way back then, she didn’t know.

She stepped back, shaking her head. “I don’t…think so.”

His head tilted. “Really?” She removed her hands from his and he sighed. “Okay. Just…stay there.” And he stepped backward into the room and disappeared into the dark. Marla stepped to the edge of the door and peered around it. Her eyes adjusted just enough to make out his silhouette moving on the other side of the room. She heard the rattle of a closet door sliding open.

“Shit,” he said. “Do you have a light? Anything?”

Marla stood very still for a long minute, then dipped her hand into her coat pocket and pulled out a lighter. She flicked it on and held it up and the light flickered crazily around the room. Ben’s shape, dancing back and forth in front of a mirrored closet door, beckoned her over.

“Please? I promise I’m not going to rape and murder you.”

“That’s exactly what a rapist and murderer would say,” Marla replied, not moving.

“If I was going to rape you, would I have gone down on you first?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you’re a freaky weirdo.”

“I am a freaky weirdo. But not that kind of freaky weirdo.” He held out his hand again. “Please?”

Sighing, Marla stepped into the room. She crossed to the closet and stood just out of his reach and held up the lighter. “Okay. Now you can see.”

Shaking his head, he turned and pushed the closet door all the way open, dropped to his knees, and began pulling things out of it. He set them in a pile on the floor by her feet.

“What are you looking for?” said Marla. Ben said nothing. He kept pulling things out of the closet until one of the things he pulled out was a medium-sized shoebox, and he said, “Aha!” and got to his feet. He turned to Marla, grinning slyly, and opened the lid. Marla lowered the lighter and peered into the box.

It was full of porn. Old magazines. Playboy and Hustler and something called Leg Show. The top one was dated 2006. Ben pulled a stack out and tossed them on the floor, and in the bottom of the box underneath them was a ream of foil condom packets. He picked it up and dangled it between his fingers.

“Tada!”

Marla gaped. “What the fuck…is happening right now?”

“I found us condoms.”

“I can see that. How the fuck did you know there was a shoebox full of porn and condoms in this closet?”

“I put them there.”

“What do you mean ‘you put them there’? How? When?”

“When…?” He tilted his chin up and squinted at the ceiling. “The magazines have been here for…shit, probably fifteen years? Twenty? Since high school. I hid some condoms around the same time, but obviously, those expired, so I swapped them out last time I was here. Which was—Thanksgiving before the pandemic? So I guess these have been here about a year.” He held the packet up to the light and frowned at it. “Hopefully they’re still good.”

Marla was still staring at him with her mouth open. Some kind of sense was slowly making itself inside her head. She shut her eyes and lowered the lighter.

“This is your house.”

“It was my parents’ house,” he corrected.

A very long, dark, cold silence filled the room. The nice old couple she had buried in the backyard. Those were Ben’s parents. The piano. That was Ben’s piano. That was how Ben had known to drive his Tesla right up into the driveway when she had been standing out there last week. He hadn’t come for her. He had come for the house. He had lost his wife and his kid and had come back to Stillwater to be in his childhood home and—

“I chased you off with an ax,” she said.

He chuckled and tucked the ream of condoms into the breast pocket of her coat, then cupped her face with one hand. “That’s okay. You looked pretty cute holding that ax.”

“Cute?”

He laid his thumb against her cheek. “Mhm.”

“So me in high school with a stupid haircut and a Horrorpops t-shirt is ‘terrifying’ but me chasing you off from your childhood home with an ax is ‘cute’?”

“Something like that.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“It’s really fine, Marla. I figured I’d wheedle my way back in here somehow.” He slipped his free hand around to squeeze her ass and used it to pull her toward him.

“Hold on,” she said, turning her head so his lips landed on the corner of her mouth, “you’re not just fucking me to get back into this house, are you?”

“No. Of course not.” He paused, apparently considering the question more deeply, and then amended, “I guess it’s a perk.”

“And you’re telling me you stashed condoms in a shoebox in your parents’ house as a grown man?”

“I told you. I’m a freaky weirdo. I happened to have them on me at Thanksgiving last year and I thought it would be funny. You never know when something like that is going to come in very handy.”

“Like during the apocalypse.”

He grinned. “Like during the apocalypse.”

His grip around her ass was tightening, his lips traveling more insistently along the edge of her jaw. He pressed his hips against hers and she felt him pulse as he said, rough and low in her ear, “Are we doing this, Marla?”

Marla’s insides turned to liquid. She grabbed the collar of his coat and dragged him backwards out of the room as he kneaded her ass and tried to get his lips onto as much of her neck as possible. At the top of the landing he hoisted her over his shoulder, fireman-style, and she squealed and beat at him as he carried her down the stairs.

He set her down between the couch and the fire, plucked the condoms from her coat pocket, and tossed them onto the couch, then unzipped her coat and his own with trembling fingers, and pushed them both onto the floor. Marla slipped off her underwear and then fumbled with his belt while his hands roved all over her, his teeth nipping at her jaw, his breath coming in short, harsh pants against her neck.

When she finally got the buckle and button of his jeans open, yanked down his zipper and reached inside, he moaned and bowed his hips into her hand. Marla’s mouth fell open and she pulled back to look down between them as he sprang free. He was fucking huge.

Jessica Foster knew what she was doing.

Marla pushed his waistband down enough to wrap her hand around him and stroked him. He swore and dropped his forehead to her shoulder. Moisture was already leaking freely from the tip of him, and it made the pool between Marla’s thighs exponentially wetter. He caught her by the wrist as she took another pass at him.

“If you keep doing that,” he growled, “I am not going to be able to fuck you.”

He lifted his head and stepped back, shed his pants, and stepped out of them. Marla stared at the sheer, gorgeous might of him, straining at her.

He picked up one of the foil packets, tore it open and handed it to her. She slipped it over him and he shuddered and put his hands on her hips as she rolled it down. When she looked up and met his eyes again, they were deadly serious.

“Turn around and kneel on the couch.”

His voice curled around her like a dangerous shadow, and she caught her breath and did exactly what he said. He made a low noise in his throat and grabbed her by the hips, pulling her toward him and sliding his cock against her entrance. Desire throbbed deep inside Marla and she arched her back to roll her ass against him.

He removed one hand from her hip and used it to put himself barely inside her, then bent and put his lips to her ear.

“Hold on.”

Marla swallowed and gripped the back of the couch with both hands.

Ben plunged into her with such a powerful thrust that she lurched like she had been hit by a train, and yelled.

Ben, growling, paused at the bottom of the stroke. “Okay?”

“Jesus,” she gasped. “Yep.”

He gripped her hips with both hands and pulled slowly, torturously slowly, out of her, and Marla felt her eyes roll back in her head. Then he sank back in.

“Fuck, Marla,” he groaned. “You feel so fucking good.”

Marla couldn’t breathe as he pulled out and rammed into her again. And again. Faster, harder, every stroke shunting her toward the back of the couch so that she had to brace against it. She was filled and stretched to the point of pain, to the edge of need, and yet she felt like she couldn’t get him deep enough, couldn’t take him hard enough. The desire he had kindled with his tongue and fingers was roaring through her like wildfire, obliterating everything in its path until there was only his cock and her center and the blazing, uncontrollable heat between them.

Ben swore over and over—every time he was buried fully inside her, another oath seemed to slip between his teeth. He dug his fingers into the flesh of her hips, slamming into her like he meant to hurt her, like he wanted her flayed open so he could get to every untouched part of her.

He drove his hand into her hair and pulled her head back, and she felt his chest against her back, his teeth against her jaw as he snarled, “Terrifying, She Wolf. You’re going to fucking ruin me.”

Marla moaned her approval of the nickname she had spent all of high school hating. Ripped from his throat like that, it was an invocation. A prayer. A fucking plea. Like he was worshiping at her awesome, terrible alter. It was enough to push her to the very edge, and she clung to the last remaining threads of her sanity as release closed around her.

Ben’s other hand slipped around to stroke her, and when she cried out, he echoed with, “Yes. Fucking come.”

Shouting, Marla came—an avalanche of pressure, pain, and mad, wild relief that cleaved her in half like an ax. She let go of everything and fell apart, and as she split open around him, Ben roared and came with her.

He was frantic, brutal, his hand fisted in her hair, moaning and swearing and pounding into her so hard Marla lost her grip on the back of the couch and fell onto her face. He tumbled to his knees behind her, throwing out an arm to catch them, his cock buried so deep in her that Marla could feel every colossal pulse as it drained.

They knelt there, gasping, for minutes. Marla’s face, smashed against the leather of the couch, was a mess of sweat and tangled hair. She felt Ben press his lips between her shoulders, then straighten. He carefully extracted himself from her and she rolled onto her back as he stood, stripping off the condom and snapping it into the fire.

She sat up on her elbows and looked at him, and he wobbled, like the look had knocked him sideways, and sank to a seat on the couch beside her. He flung his arm out and laid his hand on her thigh and blew a very long, very hard breath at the ceiling.

Marla’s eyes swam to the clock across the room. It was twelve-fifteen. “It’s officially Christmas,” she croaked.

Ben pinched her thigh and tilted his head toward her. “Merry Christmas, She Wolf.”

FOUR

MARLA WOKE the next morning on the couch under a heap of blankets, with Ben’s arms folded around her and his chest against her back. Sweat was sheening on her skin; it was like being held by a furnace. She pushed the blanket pile off and shivered in the chilly air of the living room. The fire had burned down again.

Untangling herself from Ben, she rolled off the couch onto the floor. Bazooka, who had been curled up right below her, barely managed to scramble out of the way.

“Where you going,” mumbled Ben.

She stood up, hauling her coat around her shoulders. “Start the fire.”

He groaned and rolled onto his back, blearily opening his eyes. “I feel like I should do that. Being the man.”

Marla scoffed. “Do you know how to make a fire?”

“No.”

“Do you even know how to split a log?”

“Think I split your log pretty good last night.”

She rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe you survived the apocalypse.”

“Guess it’s a good thing I found you. If anyone was voted Most Likely to Survive the Apocalypse, it would have been Marla Fuckin’ Quinn. Anyway, I have generators.”

“Right. Your fucking generators.”

“What’s wrong with my generators?”

Marla opened her mouth, then remembered it was Christmas, and closed it again. “Nothing. They’re fine.”

“So you don’t mind if I turn my Christmas lights back on today?”

Marla sighed. “No, I don’t mind if you turn your Christmas lights back on today.”

Ben reached behind her thigh and tugged her back toward the couch. “Actually, I was thinking…I might move them.”

“Move them?”

“Mhm.”

“Where?”

He trailed one finger from her knee to her hip. “…over here?”

Marla folded her arms. “Oh really.”

“It is my house, after all…”

“Mm.”

“And it’ll be much easier to fuck you if I’m already over here.”

“Uh huh.”

“And…we may have to repopulate the Earth at some point. Which is going to mean an awful lot of fucking.”

“What a waste of all those carefully hoarded condoms.”

He shrugged one shoulder. “I won’t miss them.”

“Right.”

He bent one arm behind his head and looked up at her, his fingers circling her thigh. “And…it is Christmas…”

Marla caught his hand as it wandered under the hem of her coat, and laced her fingers through his. “Alright, Shirt Parade,” she said. “Bring your damn Christmas lights over.”

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Axel isn’t ready to lead the revolution. But since she met Darian she may not have a choice.

The wealth gap is so wide it’s basically a canyon. The top 1% live high above the Earth in glittering silver towers, while the masses toil in the filthy streets below.

The world is ready for a revolution. And Axel’s on board…she just isn’t sure she should be the one to lead it.

Then she meets Darian Rafferty.

Confident, charming, entitled; he’s everything she detests about the über rich. He’s also undeniably handsome, obviously into her, and the son of the very man Axel’s comrades are plotting to overthrow.

When her rebel friends push her to use Darian to infiltrate his father’s empire, Axel discovers that the perks of getting close to him are…substantial. Penthouses. Fine dining. Chopper rides.

But when the rebel plot comes to a head at the Billionaire’s Ball on New Year’s Eve, Axel uncovers a chilling secret.

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Roses Are Red 🌹🦋 Violence Is Blue

Spicy enemies-to-lovers dual-POV Fae romance with a mafia twist.

When a human from a rival province kills his father and older brother, mild-mannered Xyran “Blue” Rossi finds himself next in line for control of Ravenna. A fae mafia kingpin. But Blood Law dictates that before he can succeed the throne, he must take a wife.

An unexpected peace offering comes in the form of Cirella—sister of the human who killed his brother and father. Offered up by her human family to atone for her brother’s crime, Cirella checks all the fae mafia wife boxes: pretty, smart, good with a blade…

Xyran’s mother is ready to bury the hatchet. A Valentine’s Day wedding will be the perfect way to ease relations between the two families.

Unfortunately, neither Cirella or Xyran have any intention of playing nice.

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What do you do with a drunken sailor when the world is under water?

My name is Bird Howsley, and I’m a beautiful disaster. Okay, “beautiful” is probably being generous. But the “disaster” part is right.

In a brutal, dystopian waterworld, where survival depends on skill and smarts, I’m pretty much always one bad decision away from watching my life go completely down the drain.

Luckily, I have a lifeline: my cute, level-headed sailing teacher, Sargo Paz. Did I say cute? I didn’t mean cute. He’s just a friend. I definitely don’t have weird sex dreams about him.

Anyway, three days ago, I got a message from a dead guy. That’s odd, right? I had a plan to go find him, but it went pretty badly sideways, and Sargo and I ended up in the crosshairs of a very sketchy underground organization that now wants us dead.

We didn’t know what else to do except flee into the Salt. Now we’re stuck together on Sargo’s tiny sailboat, facing down pirates and harrowing seas, and things are getting, uh—tense between us.

Oh, and did I mention I’ve been blacking out? Like…a lot?

An Excerpt

I climb down the companionway to the galley, expecting to find Sargo making a cup of tea, but he isn’t there. I squint through the cabin to the bunk in the bow. He’s kneeling on it, facing away from me with his head down. I take a few steps closer and hear him breathing hard. A shaft of fear goes through me. Is he sick? If he’s sick, I don’t know how I’m going to sail Panga on my own.

Then I see what he’s doing, and freeze. My view of his hands is blocked by the angle of his body, but I know immediately by the sound. The rhythmic sound of his fist, beating against his hips. The ragged breaths he is trying to take quietly.

He’s jerking off.

My whole body ignites. I feel like I just stepped over the edge of the world and am free-falling into nothing. I should turn around and go back to the cockpit. I should pretend I haven’t seen this.

Instead, I take a step closer.

“There is so much to love about this series! The characters are beautiful and broken. The setting is unique, dangerous, and fun…Seriously, if you haven’t read this book, read it now! It’s so good!”

Starr Z. Davies, award-winning author of Ordinary

“Dystopian like I’ve never read.”

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“Crack. That’s what this is.”

Amazon review

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PART-TIME AUTHOR 🪶⚓ FULL-TIME PIRATE.

HI! I’M LIZ.

I’m a freelance writer, indie author, and full-time, off-grid, live-aboard sailor. I’m currently sailing around the world with my boyfriend and my dog, turning my real-life adventures into speculative fiction.

I love incorporating the incredible experiences, beautiful places, and fascinating people I encounter on my travels into my work. Many parts of the world are underrepresented in fiction, particularly speculative fiction, and I feel grateful to be able to explore them.

I also use my books as a means to explore themes of mental health, addiction, technology, climate change, and the looming collapse of society (but, like…in a fun way.)

When I’m not penning novels about the impending apocalypse, I work as a freelance content writer specializing in articles about code, music theory, and off-grid living. On the rare occasion I’m not writing, you can find me swimming, hiking, telling my dog I love her for the bazillionth time today, or watching Taskmaster.