Title: Doctor, Doctor
Series: Doctor, Doctor
Author: Will Okati
Publisher: Changeling Press
Release Date: March 8, 2024
Heat Level: 4 – Lots of Sex
Pairing: Male/Male
Length: 136 pages
Genre: 2nd Chance Romance, Gay, Medical Romance, Multiple Partners, New Adult
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Synopsis
Love isn’t easy and it’s rarely simple. More often than not it takes practice. Lots of practice.
It Takes Practice (Doctor, Doctor 1)
Dr. Nathan Rey has had a case of broken heart syndrome since his wild, bad-boy lover disappeared. He still can’t forget Fitz, and no one he’s met since could begin to compare. Then Nathan’s nurse elopes overnight and the temp agency sends him, certified and licensed, Fitz himself, with far more than work on his mind. Fitz means to convince Nathan seven years isn’t too long to wait for a second chance at the love of a lifetime.
It Takes Three (Doctor, Doctor 2)
Three med students. Geoff’s wound tight as a cheap watch. Ross is, too, but unless it’s got to do with math or science he’s oblivious. Aurélien’s uber-zen, uber-practical. With exams coming up fast, they’re all in desperate need of some R & R. What better way than getting a little action? Together. Multiple times, and in multiple ways. Once they get started these guys “work” well together. Maybe a little too much so. Aren’t things like this supposed to be hard? In this case, the answer to all their questions is three.
Over Their Heads (The Deep End 2)
Alex Winters
All rights reserved.
Copyright ©2024 Alex Winters
Fitz slipped around him, bags on his shoulder, for all the world as if he were a welcome guest Nathan had invited to crash a few days while his roommates partied too loudly for even his taste. There’s another memory for you. Wasn’t this how he had teased his way in the first time, way back when?
Nathan didn’t move, except to shut the door. If he budged too far from his spot, he didn’t know what he’d do, but odds were it wouldn’t end well for either of them. He could feel the slow, bubbling boil of anger rising — an anger at rapid war with a rush of memories of Fitz’s body moving past him, against him, in him. If he’d had some warning, he’d —
Hell. Nathan had no idea what might have come to pass then. He pressed his back to the smooth coolness of the door and waited to see what Fitz had in mind. He’d let Nathan know soon enough.
He could tell Fitz sensed his mood. Fitz shifted gears, suddenly far too casual in stowing his bags in a corner of the front room. His glance at the résumé lying in plain sight couldn’t have been more transparent. “I wondered if you’d wondered,” he said. He looked wary.
Nathan waited.
“Guess I can stop wondering. The name didn’t ring any bells for you?” Fitz asked. “Really?”
“Interesting thing about that,” Nathan said, his voice tight. “After seven years you develop an immunity to looking up every time a Mike Smith crosses your path, and funnily enough it doesn’t take nearly that long for you to stop hoping it’s the man who walked out on you.”
“Huh.” Fitz picked up the résumé and flipped through its pages. “There’s a list of all the colleges I went to.”
Nathan’s temper frayed, wearing dangerously thin. “Some things never change.”
“Say again?” Fitz’s head came up.
“This is just what you always used to do.”
“What?”
“Don’t ‘What?’ me. You did that too. Ignore anything you don’t want to hear and act as you damn well please.”
Fitz spread his hands wide apart. “I’m talking. You’re the one who wanted to talk.”
“And you’re the one who misinterpreted that. On purpose. Not for the first time, is what I’m thinking, so let’s start again. What the hell are you doing here? Talk fast and talk good, and don’t unpack, because you’re not staying.”
“Two out of three isn’t bad. I am staying.” Fitz planted his feet firmly on the floor. “You need me.”
Nathan’s mouth dropped open. “Say that again?”
“I read the letters from the agency. You needed me a week ago. You needed someone the night your regular lady ran off. I’m here now. Ergo, you need me.”
“That’s thin, Fitz.”
“So are you.” Fitz gave him a once-over that irritated and inflamed things best left alone. “You’re not eating.”
“I think you gave up the right to worry about me a long time ago.” There. A shirt draped over the top of the couch. Clean? No.
The corner of Fitz’s mouth lifted. “You still have trouble with wandering clothes? Here.” He knelt to dig in his bag. “I’ve got a spare set of scrubs. The pants would be too short, but the shirt ought to fit.”
Nathan refused to take the wisp of blue fabric Fitz held out to him. He had to. Give in once and give in for good. That had been Fitz then, and he doubted it could possibly be different now.
Fitz tossed the shirt at him regardless. “I had my reasons for what I did.”
“Somehow I doubt that.”
“Good ones.”
“Somehow I doubt that even more.”
Fitz nodded at the shirt in Nathan’s hands, waiting patiently for him to take what was on offer. Nathan did not miss the metaphor dropped with all the subtlety of an anvil. Fitz conceded that to him with a slight tip of the head when he said, “You don’t want me here. I get that. Why do you think it took me this long?”
“Ask me why I think you left in the first place.”
Fitz grimaced. “Because I’m an ass,” he said. “I told you, time and again, I wasn’t a good guy.”
“And yet you’re here, to be my nurse now, and I should trust you why?”
“Because that was seven fucking years ago.”
“And that’s your argument?”
“You didn’t let me finish.” Some of the old fire sparked to life in Fitz. Nathan remembered how he used to blaze when he was angry, truly angry… and what the sex had been like after a fight. Swear to God, sometimes he’d picked a fight just for the fun of making up.
Fitz pressed on. “You knew me then. You need to know that I’m good at my job now. That’s why I’m here.”
“If you think I…” Nathan shook his head. “Be straight with me. I’m owed that much. Taking a job isn’t the only reason you’re here now, is it?”
“It was never your fault,” Fitz said, startling Nathan into silence. “What I did, I did for you.”
Right. Nathan could read between those lines. He scoffed. “Hurt me more than it hurt you, is that what you were thinking?”
“I was thinking the last thing you needed was a halfway-to-alcoholic millstone stoner looped around your neck next to your stethoscope, dragging you down. And don’t you dare tell me that thought didn’t occur after I’d been gone a while.”
Nathan’s mouth snapped shut.
Fitz rubbed his face, the only sign of stress he betrayed. Otherwise? Steady and smooth. Hell-bent on pursuing his course. “I wasn’t a good guy. I’ve tried to become one.”
“You –”
Fitz didn’t let him finish. “Here. See for yourself. You got the résumé from the agency, but here’s the stuff that matters.” He unzipped a side pocket on the bag he’d brought in and drew out a fat manila folder and tossed it at Nathan. Nathan caught it reflexively. “Letters of recommendation. Photos of people’s grandkids. Newspaper articles. Operation Smile. Haiti, after the quakes. I spent a year there. Learning. Becoming the man I wanted to be. For you.”
Nathan paged through the material. His brain didn’t want to process what it saw. He knew he should have been impressed. With anyone else, he would have been startled at how much one man had accomplished. Qualified? Good at what he did? And then some, plus experience with the kind of patients that made up the most of Nathan’s clientele.
It couldn’t be denied he needed a nurse. May Chelle forgive him, but a male nurse would be his choice. His patients might be laid up in bed, sometimes, but more often they were stubborn with age, still surprisingly strong and uncooperative. And then there were the times his Jeep got stuck in the mud after it rained.
Fitz was perfect on paper. But —
“It wasn’t what I’d planned on,” Fitz said. He took the scrub shirt and smoothed out the suitcase wrinkles. “But if I’d walked up to you out of the blue, would you have given me this much, or just slammed the door in my face?”
Fitz had a point. Nathan knew it, too.
“All I’m asking for is a chance,” Fitz said. He offered the shirt a second time, and faced Nathan man to man. “A chance to say this, at least — you’ve never meant any less to me than you did back then, and you meant the world then. Understand that.”
Understand that? It knocked the breath out of Nathan, but Fitz never had done anything halfway, had he? “I ought to turn you over my knee.”
“If that’s what you want, I won’t say no.” A submissive-sounding statement, but Fitz was without mercy. He pushed forward, into Nathan’s space. “Anything you tell me except ‘no’ without a chance to prove myself, I’ll be good for.”
“And after that?” Nathan’s mouth had gone cotton-dry.
“If you give me one chance, maybe you’ll give me two. A chance at what, I don’t know. It’s up to you.”
Nathan could smell the cleanness of soap and the ozone tang of winter winds that clung to Fitz’s skin, which seemed as soft and smooth as it’d always looked. Want. Hunger. More. His throat dried. “It’s never up to me when you’re around.”
“Yes,” Fitz said, closer still, drawing nearer all the while. God. He took Nathan’s breath away. To look at him was to lust for him. “You might want to kick me out on my ass right now, but you need me.”
Nathan could read between those lines, too.
“Or is that the problem?” Fitz touched him. The past and the present collided. If Nathan shut his eyes he would be able to recall the exact smell of the tile and the soap from that shower. The last time they’d been this close…
“I know exactly how you’re reacting to me. I can react to you too, if you want.” Fitz ghosted his fingertips across Nathan’s chest. “Seven years looks good on you, and I haven’t forgotten a thing.”
“No?”
“Oh, no,” Fitz breathed, coming as close as he possibly could without —
But of course he didn’t stop there. Nathan shut his eyes tight when Fitz’s lips touched his, and the past burst fully free of the makeshift lockbox he’d sealed it so imperfectly in.
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Will Okati (formerly known as Willa) has lived through a few Interesting Times, but come out the other side a little grayer, a little wiser, and ready to get writing. Still as passionate about coffee, cats, and crafts as ever, but knowing that to your own self you must be true. Also still one of the quiet ones to watch out for, but life — like storytelling — is always a work in progress.
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