Hard Bitten

by M. K. York

  The guys settled onto the couch—Lukas had insisted on getting the matching love seat, even though it was a little tight, because he didn’t have any intention of trying to keep his elbows tucked.

  He hadn’t exactly meant to move in to Mark’s, but after the shooting, he’d stayed for a few days, and then his parents got on his case about moving in with them until he found somewhere new. When he broached the subject with Mark, Mark got a funny look on his face and asked if he wanted to move back in with them, and Lukas found himself saying, “What, are you fucking kidding me?” and that had more or less been that.

  And now, the guys—well, the two-thirds of the guys that weren’t currently serving a punitive sentence—were familiar enough with Lukas-and-Mark’s apartment to sling him shit about a nice new couch. It was good. It was a good place to be.

  They roared at the game. Mark had a thing about the Broncos, and he couldn’t stop shouting at the TV. They drank their beers, and when the timer ran down, Nick and Alex sagged into the couch. Alex found it in his heart to turn to Lukas and say, gravely, “This is a comfortable fucking couch, man.”

  “I know.” Lukas jerked his head at Mark. “That guy picked it out. Turns out he has pretty good taste.”

  “Now we know that is not true.” Nick high-fived Alex for his witticism.

  “Bite me.”

  They finally left—pausing to exchange manly hugs and backslaps—and that just left Mark and Lukas, standing near the doorway, alone with the TV still silently flickering on mute.

  “Hey.” Lukas had to clear his throat.

  Mark glanced over at him, interest piqued. “What?”

  “I, uh.” Lukas took a deep breath and dropped to one knee.

  “Oh, shit,” said Mark. “Shit! You’ve got to be kidding me.” But his voice was tight with excitement, not fear.

  Lukas reached into his back pocket and produced an envelope. “It’s not, uh, it’s not jewelry, but I thought it was, uh, thematically appropriate for commitment.”

  “And people say I’m the nerd—” muttered Mark, snatching the envelope and opening it with shaking hands. “Oh, my God, are you seriously proposing to me with season tickets?”

  “I—yeah. I am.”

  “You enormous weirdo, yes. Yeah. I’ll marry you.”

  Lukas had to breathe deeply, and again, and then Mark was dropping to kneel next to him, laughing with a faint edge of hysteria. “Oh no you don’t! You don’t get to hyperventilate on me! You proposed to me, babe, get your head in the game.”

  And that was so perfectly Mark that Lukas found himself laughing instead of gasping, and the graying edges of his vision receded.

  “Seahawks tickets.” Mark kissed him, still laughing, and just missed the edge of his mouth. “I can’t fucking believe you.”

  “You like the Seahawks.”

  “I fucking love the Seahawks, this is great, I’m dragging your ass to every game this year.”

  “Sounds fair.”

  “This is a marriage proposal, though, right? I didn’t just misinterpret that to a hilariously awkward degree?”

  “No. I mean, yeah. Yeah. I want to marry you.” It was getting easier to say.

  Mark slowly eased himself to sit back against the wall. “You, uh, mind if I immediately Facebook this shit?”

  “Go for it.”

  “My mom’s going to lose her mind.” Mark hesitated. “Sorry.”

  “No, it’s cool.” Maybe Lukas’s mom would even come, if nobody told his dad.

  “I just—” Mark squeezed his hand, briefly, but it made him feel a little lighter. “Holy shit, do you think we can get a spread in Martha Stewart Weddings? Mary Lynn would sacrifice at least a goat for that.”

  “I thought maybe we could do something...small.”

  “Destination wedding! I like it. Great idea.”

  Lukas wasn’t sure what his face was doing, but Mark burst into huge whoops of laughter as he lifted his phone to snap a shot of the tickets.

  “Just fucking with you, babe. No. We’ll figure that shit out. I’m just going to—okay, there, it’s on Facebook. Oh God, the notifications are starting.”

  “There’s, uh, champagne in the fridge. Behind the watermelon.”

  Mark looked up, caught off guard, something soft and sweet sliding across his face. “You want to pour us a glass?”

  “Yeah. Yeah.”

  Lukas slowly pulled himself to his feet, still feeling light-headed, and Mark followed, dropping into one of the chairs at their tiny kitchen table.

  And watching the bubbles fizz up, listening to his—fiancé, now—humming something off-key behind him, Lukas tentatively poked at the thing in his brain that was huge and overwhelming, to find out what it was. That it was happiness came as not quite a surprise.

  “Jen votes for Bermuda,” Mark said absent-mindedly. “Kelly’s a bad influence.” Lukas handed him a champagne flute and tapped his lightly to Mark’s. Mark looked up and met his eyes.

  “To—” said Lukas, and stopped.

  Mark, though, Mark who always had something to say, came to the rescue. He clinked his glass back against Lukas’s and said, “To us.”

  *

  To read NECESSARY MEDICINE by M.K. York, visit Carina Press.

  AUTHOR NOTE

  Despite the book’s setting in Seattle, I have not included any scenes in which characters peel off soaking wet socks with disgust after stepping into puddles that didn’t look that deep. Statistically speaking, there should be at least one such scene every 2.5 pages. I apologize for the omission.

  If you are familiar with the Seattle Department of Public Defense, you will notice immediately that the organizational structure presented in this book is different. That’s because the Seattle organizational structure is bananas. They subcontract with multiple firms, and there’s ongoing chaos. If you are particularly familiar with public defense, you may recognize which city’s org structure I did pull. And to you I say: I know about the orange pants.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank my live-in lawyer, who has spent the last several years trying to convince me to say attorney the same way doctors always call themselves physicians; my dear friend Samantha, who talked me through the times when I came to a dead halt; Peter Falk, whose oeuvre as Columbo this plot drew from heavily; and my high school English teacher, who believed I could write, although I sincerely doubt that this is what he imagined, mostly because as an older straight white man his imagination was profoundly limited.

  I would particularly like to thank my editor, Anne Scott, who keeps my characters human and my timelines coherent, whose smiley faces in the margins give me life, and who puts up with spontaneous mid-edit comment rants about politics with dignity and grace.

  Now Available from Carina Press and M.K. York

  Necessary Medicine

  With intelligence and humor, debut male/male author M.K. York delivers an emotionally charged slow-burn romance set in a prestigious Bay Area teaching hospital.

  Read on for an excerpt from

  NECESSARY MEDICINE

  The line at the coffee stand was long enough that he was going to be late getting back to class. Great. He fumbled in his jacket pocket, pulling out his phone to check the time—yes, definitely, he had two minutes to make it through at least four minutes of halting coffee orders from the people ahead of him. Just order, he willed them. Drip coffee. That’s all you need. No small talk, no creamer, no extra shots.

  He hadn’t developed telepathic powers since the last time he tried, though, and the line inched forward.

  When he finally, finally made it to the counter, he said, “Sixteen-ounce drip, please,” and had his exact change ready for speed. The barista smiled politely and turned to get the coffee for him.

  He was trying not to drum his fingers on the counter with anxiety when he glanced back and saw the man in line behind him. Jesus Christ. He was—he was like a Renaissance portrait, the light glowing off his silver h
air in an unreal halo, face calm and handsome. Powerful shoulders under his suit. Neil jerked his eyes front again, painfully aware that he was wearing a ragged hoodie he’d had since undergrad and baggy jeans with holes.

  The barista said, “Sir?” and held out his cup.

  “Yeah, thanks.” He escaped, forgetting to grab a little cardboard sleeve and then having to juggle it to avoid burning his hands.

  *

  He settled back into his chair (third row, right of center, perfect for the acoustics) in the classroom he’d be stuck in for the rest of the afternoon with the other second-year medical students. The lecture hadn’t started, thank God.

  “Which lecture is this one?” he asked Bobby.

  “Cardio.” Bobby jiggled one foot in time with an imaginary melody. “Guest lecture on transplantation.”

  “Oh, fun,” he said, sincerely. “I thought it was going to be Urinary.”

  “No, that’s in two hours.”

  “Okay, good.” He shuffled through his copy of the syllabus to find the lecture, and paused. Great. Now if he could find a pen—

  The doors at the front opened, and their guest lecturer arrived, three minutes late. Neil didn’t look up from his hunt for a writing utensil until their course chair said, “In this lecture we’ll be hearing about cardiac transplantation and postsurgical management from Dr. Newcombe, who’s here today from McGill.”

  He glanced up—and it was the man from the coffee line, bending over to the microphone, adjusting it up an inch or two.

  “Hello,” said Dr. Newcombe, smiling out at them. He sounded like pure class. “It’s my pleasure to speak to you today about this topic, which is near and dear to my heart, if you’ll pardon the pun.”

  A faint groan rippled through the room, but everyone settled down quickly enough. He had them laughing more than once, handled questions gracefully, talked about patients as if they were people.

  At the hour break, Bobby nudged Neil sharply and muttered, “Silver fox. Your type?”

  “Shut up, Bobby.”

  “Make me.”

  “You wish.”

  “And his slides are so well organized. It’s very sexy.”

  “I am going to go do literally anything but listen to you right now.”

  Bobby snorted as Neil stood up and ducked behind the seats to get out of their row, water bottle in hand. His route out of the classroom took him about a foot away from where Dr. Newcombe was talking to another student. His voice was low, pleasant, like bass that would reverberate in Neil’s chest.

  “—well, I have to recommend McGill, obviously,” he was saying. His eyes caught Neil’s as he passed, and their gaze held for a moment. “It’s a world-class institution, and I was very lucky—”

  The door shut behind him, and he waited in line at the water fountain until he could refill his bottle and get back to his seat, willing the ridiculous heat in his cheeks to subside.

  *

  He spent the second hour like the first, staring at Dr. Newcombe, watching the spotlights gleam on his hair and the glitter of the wedding ring on his finger, his high cheekbones like polished bronze.

  “To sum up, transplantation is a difficult field,” Dr. Newcombe said, leaning forward over the podium like he was telling them a secret, “not just technically, although it is very technically challenging. It’s difficult because there is so much weight attached to it, the patients’ expectations, their needs, their hopes. There’s the weight not just of what’s been but what they hope will still be. Managing those expectations—helping patients to understand what the true benefits of transplantation are for them—is the first step to helping them lead richer, more rewarding lives afterward. And in some cases, even before.”

  Then he smiled, and Neil would have sworn he looked right at Neil as he added, “So I hope you’ll consider a career in cardiology. It really is the best. Please feel free to email me if you have any questions.”

  Copyright © 2017 by M.K. York

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Michelle K. York is a lifelong romance reader. She began with her mother’s vast collection of Georgette Heyer novels and went on from there. Her first book, Necessary Medicine, drew heavily on her experiences as a medical trainee; her second book, Hard Bitten, takes on the environment of criminal law—also intense and full of workaholics, but with a different flavor. Her academic writing on sexual desire is confined to a dusty library shelf in her alma mater, but has shaped how she approaches the depiction of complex human relationships.

  You can find her on Twitter at Twitter.com/mk_york_books if you’d like to enjoy a mishmash of cat pictures, political rants, and unsettling medical facts.

  Introducing the Carina Press Romance Promise!

  The Carina Press team all have one thing in common: we are romance readers with a longtime love of the genre. And we know what readers are looking for in a romance: a guarantee of a happily-ever-after (HEA) or happy-for-now (HFN). With that in mind, we’re initiating the Carina Press Romance Promise. When you see a book tagged with these words in our cover copy/book description, we’re making you, the reader, a very important promise: This book contains a romance central to the plot and ends in an HEA or HFN.

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  ISBN-13: 9781488028281

  Hard Bitten

  Copyright © 2018 by M.K. York

  All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 22 Adelaide St. West, 40th Floor, Toronto, Ontario M5H 4E3, Canada.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired
by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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