Standard Disclaimer: No copyrighted material used in this chapter belongs to me. A little of this chapter belongs to Linda Howard/Jones along with the bare minimal contributions of RIB and the writers of Glee mixed in. There are two days until this story end but also two days until Christmas and maybe two condoms left. Thanks for hanging in there. I rewrote a lot of this chapter even though it is short. The initial chapter was way shorter LOL but I dedicated this chapter to my reviewers who take a little of their valuable time to react, so I could take a little of mine to flesh this out and give it a little smut and a little of my geekiness. We will need romance to distract us from the next chapter which is stressful...Thanks for hanging in there. You all are more awesome than words can say.

Chapter Twenty-Three

After they returned from Sam's cabin, Cedes felt like she was a participant in the Destiny's Child's song "Lose My Breath" video with her body drained from having a dance battle against herself. Sam could keep up, but it was as if the universe seemed to take pleasure in running her ragged, which Cedes supposed was punishment for the lazy morning she had spent in Sam's arms. She didn't care a bit; she'd gladly work her butt off in exchange for those hours cuddled up with him.

He had brought down an impressive collection of weapons and ammunition with him, and after dropping her off at Roz's, he left her to make contact with others in the community patrol unit to finalize the plan.

As soon as she walked into the house, she was bombarded. Roz wanted her to come into the bedroom to keep her company, which Cedes interpreted as meaning she wanted the gossip on what had or had not happened with Sam. Bree was bored, and Cedes's arrival freed her to make the longish walk to a friend's house to escape the old and the forgetful as she liked to call her grandmother and Carmen. Carmen was ever busy trying to cook, clean, and take care of Roz, which even with Bree's help was a lot on her plate. And laundry needed to be done.

Oh hell. Of all the things that being without electricity had made daily life more difficult, doing laundry without running water was at the top of the list.

"I hate that it has to be a trade-off," she complained to Carmen. "We can either run the generator long enough to wash the clothes, then hang them to dry or decide to use the generator down the road, so we'll have fuel for hot showers. What do we choose?"

"Cedes washing our bodies is easier than washing clothes," Carmen argued with irrefutable logic.

"I agree."

They started the generator and Cedes began doing the laundry. Funny—the washing machine felt like such a luxury now that she actually enjoyed using it. When she stepped back into the living area, Carmen said, "Breakfast was really good this morning. That bacon was so good, it was the best I've ever had." She winked at Cedes. "Too bad you missed it."

Cedes felt her face heating up, but she smiled and said, "I didn't miss it. We had bacon, too." We. How extraordinary, and how wonderful, that she and Sam were now considered a we.

"What you say?" Roz bellowed from her bedroom.

Cedes rolled her eyes at Carmen. "How on earth did she hear that from her room?"

"It's her superpower," Carmen replied, grinning. She turned back to the supper she was cooking. After her initial shock at the crisis, and fear of the unknown, Carmen had settled in; cooking was her superpower, and Cedes had the thought that without her they wouldn't be eating nearly as well as they had been. Carmen was older than all of them and knew things from her own grandparents as well as her own parents during power outages on how to cook just about anything with a fire place.

"Mercedes Selah Jones! You better come give me the 411 about that hottie with the body right now, or I swear I'll crawl out of this bed and come in there and tickle it out of you. You know tickling causes you to pee your pants!"

She would try to do it, too; a determined Roz Washington was a force to be reckoned with. But Cedes was chuckling as she went into Roz's bedroom, because it wasn't as if she intended to keep her relationship with Sam a secret. She'd barely settled in and started answering Roz's barrage of questions when someone knocked on the door, then Carmen and Emma appeared in the doorway.

"I have got something to run by you," Emma said to Cedes.

And that was the real start of the busy day. Emma, their acting librarian/teacher, had taken it upon herself to get with Holly Holiday and design the braziers, based on an entry they'd looked up in an ancient set of World Book Encyclopedias. This was one less thing Cedes had to do, but they wanted her approval. By the time that was finished and Emma was gone, the washer was finished with its cycle, and she took the clothes outside to hang them on the clothesline to dry.

While she was doing that, a kindergarten teacher, Harmony Lindsey who Roz had contacted to work with the lower grades, walked up and wanted to begin organizing the curriculum for the school. She helped Cedes finish hanging the clothes, then they went inside for a four-way conversation with Roz and Carmen.

Next one of the community's assistant pastors came knocking. Brother Joe Hart was in his late twenties, looked kind of like a a hippy and had dreadlocks like Carmen. He was only recently named as an assistant pastor of the new community wide system of churches because he was the youngest clergy member in the area, which meant he was responsible for most home visits and any work that required physicality. He used to be the youth pastor at the new progressive church that she never attended, but Bree had gone to several of their youth outreaches and gushed about how cool he was. Cedes, Bree, and Roz attended the Baptist church that their family had always been members of since her great grandparents settled in the area. It was obvious why they would send him to her with all the pastors' concerns.

"People are going to want to get married, but there aren't any marriage licenses now. Babies will need to be recorded, but we don't have birth certificates—and, mark my words, starting in about seven months we're going to have a population explosion here. When the lights go out and the television goes off, people find other ways to entertain themselves. How do you want to handle these issues?"

Cedes gaped at him. Somehow she didn't think "community leader" was intended to be in charge of things like this. Marriages, divorces, and births were legal issues, state issues . . . and there were no functioning local governments now. Lord help her.

It wasn't just Brother Joe Hart who would be asking; there were other churches in the area, other pastors. Someone needed to make a decision. Cedes wanted to take him into Roz's bedroom and turn him over to her aunt, but Roz was taking a much needed nap.

There was something really serious that would be going down tomorrow, she felt as if she should be concentrating on that, but she couldn't breathe a word about it to anyone—and even in the middle of big drama, the small dramas of life went on. People would be born, and people would die. There would be marriages and divorces—well, maybe not divorces, though people could break up and stop living together—regardless of whether or not there was a functioning government, and everything needed to be recorded.

"Get a notebook," she said. "Or one of those big scrapbooks. It doesn't matter what you use, but records have to be kept. We'll do what people did when all of this was the business of the churches, before politicians stuck their noses in it and people began to profit off of it. You perform marriage ceremonies, and you record them. Same with births: they need to be written down, baptize the babies if the parents want you all to. If people still have family Bibles, record the information in there as well."

Brother Joe looked relieved. "I was hoping you'd say that. We've been talking about this—the other pastors and I—and that was the only way to handle the situation that we could think of, but we wanted some official guidelines we could all follow, so we're all on the same page."

She wondered why, in that case, they hadn't drawn up their own guidelines, but people had gotten accustomed to the government making those decisions for them. She sincerely doubted the state would have her arrested for "authorizing" a system, so she might as well be the one to give them permission. "When everything is up and running again, and that may be years, I doubt the state will take the position that all the marriages made during that time are illegal. That would be a really stupid, unpopular position to take. So treat everything as solemnly as you would before. I can guarantee you that, as far as the people here in the area are concerned, any marriage ceremony you perform is just as legal without electricity as it was with it."

"Bless you sister," said Brother Joe before leaving.

Then another neighbor showed up asking about the physical therapist assistant who had been working with Roz, because her dad was down in his back again. Carmen came to her rescue and told her about Bailey Duncan.

And so it went, for the rest of the day. Perhaps people just wanted to touch base after the traumatic events at the store, maybe they hoped for some gossip, but every visit ate up time and, for someone like Cedes who found socializing exhausting, it was very wearing. Roz woke up and wanted answers to her questions. Bree returned, more cheerful after the time spent with her friend.

Darkness came, Carmen put supper on the table, and Sam still hadn't returned. Cedes took a meal tray to Roz, who scowled at her. "Where's Sam? I want to eat at the table."

"He had a lot to do today," Cedes said, trying not to act worried, but she knew what was going on and she couldn't help worrying. What if Lawrence Nelson discovered that Herb had come to Mike? The sound of gunfire carried a long way and she thought she'd have heard any shots, but that didn't stop her from continually checking out the window, looking for headlights coming down the lane. She wanted him here. She wanted to be with him.

And then he was there. She saw the reflection of headlights on the window, the sound of the big truck pulling into the driveway. She was on the porch before he could reach it. He came up the steps and headed off any questions with a murmured, "I'll give you the details later, Cedie" then pulled her close with a steely arm around her waist for a hard, hungry kiss.

Carmen was already setting a place at the table for him when they went inside. From her bedroom Roz called, "Sam? I need your help!"

Sam looked at Cedes and cocked an eyebrow. "She called me by my government name. What's up with that?"

"It is only because she wants something from you."

"I can hear you Mer-Ce-Des!"

"You hear everything," Cedes undaunted replied. Sam went into the bedroom and came out with Roz in his arms, and her carefully balancing her dinner tray. He set her down at the table and took his place, eating quickly and efficiently while they chatted around him. Things proceeded pretty much the same as they had the night before, as if a routine had been immediately established. While Cedes and Carmen cleaned up after supper, he brought in enough firewood to get them through the night, and even collected the still-damp clothes from the clothesline. He and Bree hung the clothes where she directed, on an old folding clothes rack that Carmen had dug out of storage at her house. They tried not to use it because it took up so much room in the living room, but sometimes it was necessary.

As he scooped Roz up to take her back into the bedroom, Cedes thought of something and said, "Let me get some coffee to take home with me."

"You don't have to; I brought some from my house," Sam said over his shoulder as he maneuvered Roz through the doorway.

"That's good," they heard Roz say. "I like a man who knows how to provide and is prepared." There was a pause, then she continued with a sly tone, "What else are you prepared for?"

"Everything, ma'am. I was a Marine. I'm prepared for everything that you can think of."

Cedes wanted to disappear; she was torn between groaning and laughing. She didn't dare look at her cousin, though there was no escaping Carmen's playful elbow jab.

"That, Hottie with the Amazing Blessed by God Body, is the best answer you could have given me."

When he left Roz's bedroom he wasn't wearing an ain't shit grin, but his eyes were crinkled with amusement.

Cedes was so tired, but she forgot about her lethargy as they said their goodbyes and went out to his truck. "How did the rest of your day go?" he asked as he opened the passenger door and lifted her bodily onto the seat.

"It was incredibly busy."

He went around and got in the driver's seat, and she outlined her day just as if they'd been a couple forever. She quickly told him about Brother Joe Hart, and the only solution she'd been able to think of for the marriage and recording of births problem, the long parade of people who'd needed/wanted to talk to her, but she wasn't interested in her day. As they pulled into her driveway she immediately asked about the Nelson situation.

He outlined the plan as he got two big duffle bags from the back of the pickup. He, Brett, Mike, and Dave would be hidden in position an hour before the scheduled meeting at the old crafts store. With luck, they'd capture all six without bloodshed. Without luck, there would be bloodshed. Before she could latch on to the possibility of bloodshed he told her about stopping by the Carlisle place to see the dog, and taking them some more food.

"McConaughey—seemed happy. He ran to me and acted like he wanted to leave when I did, but Mary Jo patted her lap and called him and he ran right back to her. You can tell she already dotes on him."

And he missed the dog. He didn't even have to say it. She gave him a quick hug before they went into her home.

The night proceeded much like the one before it had, with him building up the fire and moving the mattress into the living area. He unpacked the duffle bags, laying out an impressive array of weapons, which he inspected by lamplight though she knew, since the weapons belonged to him, that they were already in excellent condition. But he was thorough, and he knew what he was doing.

She was so tired, and content to sit and read while he worked. She glanced at the clock once and saw that it was barely eight-thirty. Both the book and her eyelids got heavy, and with a sigh she rested her head against the back of the couch and closed her eyes, just for a minute. The next thing she knew he was lifting her in his arms, and when she looked again at the clock it was after nine.

"I didn't mean to fall asleep," she murmured.

"If you're too tired, we don't have to—"

She interrupted him. "You're kidding, right?"

"If you want me to be." He gave her that small, full lipped smile of his and her heart felt as if it was going to beat out of her chest. They slowly undressed each other, appreciating each other's body.

Sam kissed his way down her body and acted as if he was worshipping every dip and curve; then after making sure she was wet and ready, he rolled onto his back and took out condom number five and rolled it on, then pulled her on top of him, and without hesitation she gripped his penis and guided him slowly inside her. She felt as if her entire body tightened around him, so intense was the feel of him, big and hot, deep inside. She groaned aloud as she leaned forward, intensifying the contact. His big hands closed over her breasts, rough thumbs rubbing over her nipples, then he moved his grip to her hips and rocked her back and forth.

Her climax hit so fast and hard that it took her by surprise. Dimly, from the depths of wrenching pleasure, she heard her own high, soaring cries and was astonished at herself. She'd never been a screamer . . . until Sam. Everything about him pulled her out of herself, took her to new places even though those places were all in her head.

When she collapsed on his chest he rolled with her, tucked her under him, still stroking deep into her. He had enough control to hold on until she came again, then with a low, harsh sound he let himself go. He got up and removed the condom, washed his hands and took the cleaning wipes container from his duffle bag. Warmed some by the fire, he used the wipes to clean himself and her off before disposing of the wipes.

Lying together in front of the fire, nested in the blankets, was one of the best things she'd ever known in her life. His hand moved slowly up and down her bare back, gently massaging her vertebrae, stroking over her butt. She rested her head on his chest and listened to his heartbeat, acutely aware of both his strength and the fragility of life.

"Don't worry," he said, pulling her closer and kissing her temple.

"I didn't say anything," she protested, tilting her head back to look at him.

"It's written all over you. You didn't have to say a word."

She didn't bother arguing, because what would be the use? Instead she concentrated on this moment, the now. They were naked beneath the covers, wonderfully warm on a cold night, skin to skin, legs tangled. The fire had died down to a quiet crackle of low flames, just warm enough. In this moment, she couldn't have asked for anything more.

All it had taken to get her here was the end of the world as she knew it.

After a while he said, "What you told that preacher . . ."

"Was common sense."

"It was." He paused. "We'll be out of condoms very soon if we keep up this pace. And I don't want to stop . . . being with you." His hand moved along her hip, her thigh.

Her breath sighed out of her. "I don't want to stop being with you either; I am sure we can find another system of birth control maybe the rhythm method or something that women used long before in case we can't obtain any more condoms."

"We should get married." His voice was rough. "Don't say anything yet. I am not proposing yet, but I want you to think about it, and think hard. I'm not the best person for you— I'll try to change, but I'm not an easy person to live with. There are days when I just want to be by myself. My mom and therapist agree that I have PTSD, but after the CME, I think everybody suffers from it..."

An electric current raced through Cedes and she rose up on one elbow, her big brown eyes huge as she stared at him in the firelight. He wanted her to marry him. He'd pretty much proposed even if he denied doing it. Her heart pounded and her lips parted, but he put a finger across them. "I meant it. Don't say anything yet. This is serious business, and you need to think about it. Maybe take some time to get to know me and see if you can live with me. I know without a doubt that you are the only one for me. The only person I can imagine spending the rest of my life with. And I want you to feel the same way about me. I love you Cedes."

She buried her face against his shoulder to stifle the nervous sounds that wanted to come out of her throat that all said YES SAM YES SAM YES YES I will marry you. Sam Evans loved her. And the only negative, he could think of besides the PTSD that all of them had was that some days he wanted to be all by himself? She felt the same way about herself. They each needed to be alone for different reasons, but she imagined that the need for quiet would give them a peaceful life together. But if he wanted to wait for an answer, she would wait. Perhaps he needed the time to accustom himself to the idea, even though he was the one who had brought up the subject.

Marriage. To him. Yes, please. Oh hell yeah. Yes to the nth degree. Yes yes yes. She needed Sam and obviously he needed her. He had proved his character in caring for the Carlisles and giving the couple his dog. He was taking over and teaching their community how to be safe. He put up with Roz and her insanity, and he was the best sex she ever had. He loved her. Was she really in love with him? She didn't know for sure, but she felt way more for him, trusted him, respected him, wanted to spend every night in bed with him way more than she ever did Anthony a man she was engaged to and about to marry. She knew that during an apocalypse was not the best time to make these types of decisions, but none of them were promised tomorrow. Who knows maybe her and Sam were Tennessee's version of Rick and Michonne of The Walking Dead. She was delirious. She was equating zombies with meth heads and interlopers from other cities, a sheriff's deputy with Sam, and a badass with a sword with herself...

They lay quietly together. When she glanced up at him he was staring into the fire, his gaze distant. Proposing marriage was serious business, but she strongly suspected his thoughts had already moved on to the possible firefight looming tomorrow. People could get killed. He knew more about that, probably, than anyone else in the patrol. Whatever battles he'd been in, he still carried them with him.

She could lose him tomorrow. She felt devastated thinking that thought. Totally annihilated. Knowing how the idea of losing him had just made her feel, she knew without a shadow of doubt that she had fallen in love with Sam Evans.

It was a special kind of hell, loving someone who was on the front line. Pride mingled with quiet terror, knowing that their second night together could be their last night together. Her hands tightened on him, her fingers digging into the hard muscles of his back.

"Do you need me to distract you for a while? Sam asked her as his hand moved between her legs, fingers probing before his mouth began to pleasure her. "

Cedes closed her eyes, sighed out a soft breath. "Yes, please Sam, my love."

Then he changed positions so that she was riding his face and after giving her pleasure he spooned her. His growling voice murmured against her ear, "I can't get enough of you." And he entered her from behind using condom number six. Slowing giving them both pleasure before changing positions. Flipping them around so he could see her face when she came. Making love to her in the missionary position whispering words of love as he took her so slow, so tenderly that she was begging him to speed up, begging him to give her the pleasure that only he could give her.

Her next orgasm when it happened so unexpectantly, it rocked her to her core due to it being delayed, and Sam's release and moans of her name was right behind her.